My Soul, Your Beats!
by HuaFeiHua
Summary: Lost but not quite alone, M finds herself searching for someone who will give her memories back. But she as she digs deeper into the backstories of her newfound friends, she wonders why the school called shibusen was such a driving force in all their tragedies. Maybe the mysterious white haired demon scythe will know. [angel beats au but only kind of] SoMa, side Kidliz & Tsustar.
1. carry me far beyond the rising sun

_**Author's Note i.** before I begin, I would like to thank the mods for throwing, organizing, and keeping this event running so smoothly. It's been a fantastic experience and it really impressed me with how well organized it was. _

_I would also like to thank my two wonderful artists, DryWavelength and SwordBreaker06; I'd say I owe you my life but considering how many people I say that to that's probably going to equate to about two or three years of my life as your share lol._

 _Finally, thank you to one of my wonderful best friends for forcing me to read the soul eater manga and cry with her and telling me "no" all the god damn time and telling me I'd just fine in comparison to everyone else because OH BOY DOES THIS FANDOM HAVE SOME REALLY HIGH QUALITY FIC LIKE LITERAL GOALS. I am not worthy._

 _sounding like the first speaker to a debate aside, I'm gonna have to swear that debate is not my event whilst apologizing for the poor characterization and/or any ooc moments bc this is my first se fic, as I'm sure you all can tell, and I'm just starting to get a grip on these characters and how they write._

* * *

 **Word Count:** 9,581

* * *

She wakes up in a place she does not know.

It is dark, it is night, and all the countless stars are glittering up above, as if they have any business shining over a light polluted… city?

She sits up, brushing dirty blonde wisps of hair out of her bright green eyes, blown wide with wonder and confusion. Where did her city go? Looking around, she can see now that she's on a strange school campus, but schools belong in cities, at least from what she knows.

She frowns. What _does_ she know? Staring at her hand as though it might somehow provide her with an answer, she struggles to remember her own name.

 _M._

M?

 _Mmmmm…_

Yet after the initial M, she can remember nothing.

"Oi."

The suddenness of the unfamiliar voice jolts M out of her struggling train of thought. She glances wildly about her surroundings, her sights landing quite quickly on a tall, blonde-ish girl crouching behind a bush, a gun in hand.

"What's going on?" M begins to hiss, but the blonde girl simply holds a finger up to her lips and shushes her, gesturing with her gun to look around the bush.

M obeys and catches sight of a boy around their age, his shocking white hair sticking up in tufts, kept out of his even more startling red eyes by a grey headband. And while his clothes look like they belong to a different decade, with his black and yellow jacket and red pants, they're otherwise nothing out of the ordinary.

It's his teeth that are the kicker.

She doesn't notice them at first, but when he glances in their direction and scowls slightly at them, it becomes impossible not to, for they appear to have been filed into sharp points, not unlike those of a shark. A chill runs down her spine, but she refuses to be afraid.

"Who's that?" she finds herself asking.

"That's the Demon Scythe," the girl whispers back. She looks as though she's about to continue, but her eyes suddenly widen, almost imperceptibly so. Suddenly, she hisses, " _Get down!_ "

"What?"

M is pushed harshly to the ground and loses consciousness before she knows what happened.

* * *

She wakes up in a panic, alone. Midafternoon light is streaming into the room, which at first glance appears to have been meticulously arranged into perfect symmetry. But upon closer inspection, she realizes it is only because the wall across the room is not merely a wall, but, in fact, a mirror.

The door creaks open, and she finds herself holding her breath when it does. The same tall blonde who knocked her out she met the night prior(?) (She has no way of telling how long it's been.) pokes her head in. "Yo."

M exhales to calm herself down. "Hey."

The blonde steps into the room and is followed almost immediately by another bouncing blonde who is about a head shorter, but still still strongly resembling the other.

The taller one leans against the mirror, watching with mild interest as the shorter blonde runs up to M and jumps onto her bed, laughing. "I'm Liz," she says, "and that's my little sister, Patty. We didn't introduce ourselves last night."

"Your wording seems to imply you were both there."

"We were."

"Pardon?"

"Patty." Said blonde stops bouncing on the bed and glances over at her sister. "Soul resonance."

Immediately there is a flash of light, and when it dies down, a gun lies on M's bed where Patty had been, and Liz's clothes have changed to those more appropriate for a cowgirl. M's gaze switches between the gun on her bed and now-cowgirl Liz, trying to process what had just transpired before her.

For the strangest reason, the concept of _soul resonance_ doesn't feel new to her, and although she suspects it's merely a case of déjà vu, she hasn't the time to consider it at the moment, so she neglects the memory.

Liz waves her hand in M's general direction, allowing the cowgirl outfit to disappear in a much milder flash as the gun turns back into her sister. "Soul resonance is a bit of a tricky concept to explain, especially since most of us have other memories associated with the phrase, but I promise it will all make sense when our leader explains it to you later. But for now, all you need to know is that when you find the person you resonate best with, you will _change_. Physically. Just, uh, not in the puberty sense."

 _Darn,_ M finds herself thinking, _I'm forever doomed to having a flat chest._

"Anyway, you're awake now, so we really should take you to HQ to meet everyone else."

M blinks a few times. "Y-yeah."

* * *

Liz and Patty lead her down yet another impeccably symmetric hallway (though this time, it's not because of a mirror), all the way to a rather plain-looking door labeled _Principal's Office_. She steps inside ( _Why is everything in this school so perfectly symmetrical?_ she wonders. _It's actually a little creepy._ ) and finds a pile of teenagers her age, give or take a year or two, lounging about a coffee table and chatting amicably.

She pauses for a second, taking in the scene for as long as she can before their chatter soon fades to nothing as one by one, they notice her standing silently in the doorway.

Liz gives her a good push, and she nearly loses her balance right then and there, but she manages to catch herself as she stumbles into the room.

"Hey," M says. Before anyone else can respond, the lights dim, and a swivel chair that has been facing the windows slowly turns around.

The pale boy sitting in it looks her over carefully with an unreadable expression. M has no idea what he's looking for, but it creeps her out just as much as the perfect symmetry of the building.

"So you're the new kid," he softly says, pausing to observe her. "I like your pigtails. They make your face look more symmetrical."

"…Thanks?"

"My name is _Death the Kid_ , leader of the Anti-Demon Scythe Battalion, and symmetry is my aesthetic. I'm sure you have many questions, but worry not. Everything will be told in due time."

"Kid, can you cut the mysterious act? We've already told you it's getting irritating. Just tell…" Liz glances over at M, who is suddenly embarrassed upon the realization that she does not know her name.

"M," she says. "That's all I remember of. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. No one does at first," Liz gently tells her, then turns back to Kid with a bit of a glare. "Just tell M the gist of how things work around here."

" _Liz is really letting the new girl know who wears the pants in their relationship,_ " a pink-haired girl sitting on a couch whispers none-too-softly to the girl sitting next to her. Both Kid and Liz threw a glare at her, who immediately put her hands up in the air with the slightest of smiles.

"…First things first, you're dead."

M blinks. "I'm _dead?_ "

Everyone in the room gives her a look, some exasperated, others sympathetic.

"I know it's very hard to process at first," a tall, ponytailed girl says, her voice soft and gentle. "I arrived here weeks ago, and I still forget at times that I'm not alive anymore. You'll just have to learn to take things as they come."

"Secondly, not everyone here has souls. People without souls are called NPCs."

"Isn't that a video game term?"

"Yes, but it applies well to the soulless beings you'll find wandering about during school hours. They might not say the same thing over and over again, but they're definitely not one of us. You'd know if you talked to one of them.

"Third: just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't be obliterated." This particular statement leaves M with more than one question, but Kid seems to be getting really into this explanation thing. She remains silent in hopes that they get answered when he elaborates. She is not let down.

"Obliteration happens when you settle into a daily routine with the NPCs," Kid continues. "No one knows what happens when you're obliterated, only that you're there one second and the next, you're not. In short: it's death after death, and there's no guarantee that there's an after-afterlife."

"Uhuh." M nods.

"The fourth thing is the most important. Soul resonance."

"Liz explained that to me already," M blurts out, but the blonde shakes her head.

"Not nearly well enough. I only covered the bare minimum."

Kid eyes the both of them with a mild bit of disdain. "Anyway," he says dryly, "Soul resonance, for whatever reason, is familiar to all of us. It's the only constant in all of our backstories, so while what we call soul resonance here isn't half of what it is in our memories, it works. The core of what it is here is the same, however: it's the magic of two souls colliding with one another just right to produce and amplify an attack or simply a wavelength of magic."

"Not everyone resonates perfectly with everyone, though," Liz cuts in. "The way Patty and I resonated— that was an exception. Usually, you have to search for the person with whom your wavelengths line up with, or adjust to one another. Patty and I are sisters, as I already told you, so that makes our souls automatically compatible."

"Mhm!" Patty chimes in. "Even then, it's not our true resonant forms. That only happens when we resonate with Kid."

"Tch." Everyone turns to look at Kid again. It's clear from his expression and the fact that his face is notably more colored (Considering how pale he is, it would have been harder _not_ to notice) that he does not particularly enjoy making a spectacle of his soul's preferences for resonance.

"That's very true. While everyone is capable of resonating with everyone to some degree, there will be very few people with whom you can achieve your full potential with. You'll know your ideal partner when you resonate with them. Not only will your physical appearance temporarily change, with there also being a coin flip of a chance that you'll end up as a weapon, but you will regain the memories of your past life as well. Moving on—"

"Wait."

Kid raises an eyebrow at M, inviting her to continue.

Her throat feels dry, and for some reason, she feels nervous asking her question. She asks it anyway. "What was soul resonance like in you guys' previous lives?"

Everyone's expression turns rather wistful, except for the ponytailed girl. Hers only falls.

"It was nice," someone offers.

"Definitely," someone else agrees.

"There was a lot less transforming."

"At least, on the meister's part."

"Yeah. And we could become a weapon any time we wanted then, too. Now we're just restricted to when we resonate."

"I remember it was so much more intimate than what we've got going on now."

Only Kid and the ponytailed girl don't contribute to the memories. M gives the girl what she hopes is a meaningful look, and the girl smiles ruefully back.

"Overall," pink-hair says, "There were less drastic, but more frequent, transformations, and it led to a lot more soul bonding. Here, we mostly just resonate to fight the Demon Scythe. But then…" She trails off for a moment, then shrugs. "We should leave that for you to remember on your own time."

A moment of silence.

"The fifth thing you need to know about this universe is soul resonance," Kid says.

M is about to point out that he had _just_ explained that point. If that was all there was to say then she knew enough about soul resonance now, thank you very much, but Liz covers her mouth.

"Let it happen," she whispers. "There are only four things, but he recites them backwards after that so that he can turn it into eight. It's a symmetry thing."

* * *

Kim Diehl. Jacqueline O'Lantern Dupré. Kilik Lung. Fire & Thunder. Ox Ford. Harvar Éclair. Hiro. Meme. Anya. They are among the squad of teenagers hanging out in what really should be the principal's office. All the names start to run together in M's mind after a while, never mind the faces.

Most of them have partners already: Kim and Jackie, Ox and Harvar, so on and so forth. All of them at _least_ remember their full names, so they've at least been able to find someone they resonated with decently well. Well, all except for the ponytailed girl.

"Nakatsukasa," she tells M, the last of the group to do so. She looks a little embarrassed as she continues, saying, "That's all I can remember. It's my last name, but since it's kind of hard to pronounce and remember, everyone's been calling me Tsu. That feels right anyway."

"So you haven't met your partner yet," M realizes, and Tsu nods with a small smile.

"I've been told it will more often than not take some time to find them," Tsu explains. "But it's okay. Some days you'll wake up and you'll have a fleeting memory of your previous life to snatch onto, and there are bits of muscle memory that remain, too. You won't be in the dark forever, whether you find your partner tomorrow or next year." She glances over at the main hub of people. They have left them alone to bond for a while, to become comfortable with one another so that it will be easier to resonate later. She looks a little wistful, perhaps a little lonely, as they watch Kim cackle with laughter at some joke Jackie told her. "All I remember right now is that I had an estranged brother and that I went along with the stream of life without protest." Her expression remains unchanging, although her eyes dim a little. "Sometimes I wish I hadn't."

M nods, although she doesn't fully understand. She has nothing to say to what Tsu just told her because she has nothing she remembers but her initial.

Fortunately, Kid unwittingly comes to her rescue."Liz tells me we've failed to explain to you the purpose of the Battalion. I should amend that," he says.

Tsu notes that she is not a part of the conversation, waves goodbye, and wanders off to socialize with other members, leaving M alone to get an answer for a question she hasn't even realized is burning in the back of her mind: _why?_

"You've seen the Demon Scythe, correct?" A chill instinctively runs down M's spine at the memory of him, and Kid (correctly) assumes it's a yes. "We fight him because he's against us."

M blinks. _Well, that's stupid._ "Why's he against us?"

Kid shrugs. "I don't quite remember."

The entire Battalion grows shadier and shadier to M by the moment. "Then why haven't we made peace with him yet? If neither side remembers why they're fighting, why don't we just make peace before someone pulls a _Romeo and Juliet?_ "

"You'll find out later tonight. We have an Operation Kishin coming up so you'll be able to see firsthand why we haven't stopped yet. And in all honesty, it's unlikely anyone would ever pull a _Romeo and Juliet_ on us. First of all, it's us against only him; and secondly, it's debatable as to whether he even has a soul and therefore a capacity to love."

M flashes back to her one glimpse of the Demon Scythe the night prior and knows in an instant which side of the debate she'd be on based off his eyes alone, if there ever could be one, her resolve is so strong. "Okay, but what's 'Operation Kishin'?"

But it seems that Kid is done with the explanations, distracted by his sudden need to reorganize the desk when Patty accidentally knocks over one of the coffee cans. She'll find out later, she supposes.

* * *

That night, she's stationed atop the cafeteria roof with Tsu and Hiro for lookout duty. Tsu because she's currently not very useful for their fights against the Demon Scythe due to her lack of a partner; Hiro because… it's what he's always done? Patty whispers to her during the briefing that it's actually because no one really likes him, so they keep him far as far away from as many people as they can. Beneath their feet in the cafeteria itself, Kim, Jackie, Meme, and Anya set up stage for a performance to take place in about fifteen minutes.

M checks her watch and throws a glance at Tsu, who stands on the left side of the roof. All her attention is directed at scanning the crowd of NPC students gathering at the cafeteria doors for the Demon Scythe, (although why he should bother to show up is a complete mystery to M) so her pleas for a conversational partner are ignored, albeit accidentally.

What the girls plan to perform is a mystery to all but the performers themselves. M has no idea what to expect, so she sets the bar to nothing.

The NPCs are still squishing into the cafeteria when she hears the first few test chords play, reverberating around the high-ceilinged room and simultaneously rousing and calming the crowd. The chaotic noise of dozens of different conversations happening dies down into a singular, excited buzz. M assumes that it's the result of a positive feedback loop. When the girls play a test chord to let the crowd know they're going to start soon, the crowd quiets to let the performance begin. It's impressive.

Scanning the stragglers for the distinctive head of spiky, white hair, M concludes he's not here and relaxes to listen to the music.

One of the guitarists begins idly playing, and the audience soon begins snapping along. The percussionist joins in on a set of bongos, and M can only imagine how Kim sways and bobs her head as she plucks a few strings, waiting for her entrance.

" _It's on you… can you handle us? So cool, baby, scandalous."_

M knows that it can't be any of the girls singing because the voice is far too low for any of them to feasibly reach, and there's only so much voice filters can do without adding a disorienting amount of noise to the audio. Perhaps a recording of one of the boys? On a whim, she takes a glance at Hiro, surveying the area from the very peak of the cafeteria roof dome, and notes the smirk on his face.

The little she's seen of him so far tells her that this is one of the few things he's allowed to take pride in.

" _I'll show you ~ what I'm talking 'bout; so cool, baby, scandalous."_

M has to rein in a snort from the thought of him in one of the classrooms recording this.

The urge leaves her when the recording ends and Kim begins to rap, albeit with a filter that drops her voice about two octaves.

She tunes the girls out when her intuition spikes and her eyes begin to take inventory of her scouting area of their own accord. M's hands absently begin to go through the motions of twirling a baton despite the fact that all they hold is air, only noticing what she's doing when she swears she hears a mop clatter to the floor.

She surveys the area around the cafeteria more consciously this time as the girls move on to their second song, this one of a less laid-back style, but with vocals far more suited to Kim's range. She's not sure what she's expecting from simply looking around, but when she spots the white shock of hair wandering over to her territory, she chides herself for her doubt. She _should_ have been looking for the entire time rather than listening to the concert.

Her gaze is instantly pulled to Tsu, completely blind to the Demon Scythe making his way towards them. Her brain tells her to yell and alert everyone that _he's coming, he's coming!_ But her soul sings a different song, asking her to wait and see; if she does, she'll see for herself if all this fighting is worth it.

In the end, she listens to her heart, walking backwards to Tsu, never taking her eyes off the Demon Scythe as he ambles lazily toward the cafeteria. _He doesn't_ _ **look**_ _dangerous…_

A single gunshot rings through the air, catching M with so much surprise that she nearly falls off the roof. (Not that it would have mattered if she had fallen, she supposes. If this is the afterlife, then there should be no way to feasibly die)

" _Dammit, M!"_ she hears one of the Battalion members stationed below her yell. " _You were supposed to give us a warning that he was coming!"_ Before she can even respond, Tsu has already sprinted to the right side of the cafeteria, snatching M's hand as she ran by and effectively dragging the other girl along.

"Where'd that gunshot come from?!" M asks Tsu in the short time they have running on the roof, yelling out the question for want of a quieter environment. "Don't you have to do soul resonance to initiate transformations?!"

"Ground patrol carries guns filled with blanks in case of an emergency!" Tsu yells back.

The second song ends, and the third one bursts forth from the cafeteria just as the two girls jump off the roof, its prolonged rest coinciding perfectly with M's stopping heart as they begin to freefall.

The song's beat returns with her heart's, and before she knows it, she's hit the ground and back to back with Tsu, ready for anything that might come their way, even _if_ they had but one target.

"Fire, Thunder! Soul resonance!" she hears a boy yell, his voice harsh and throaty. M flinches when he speeds by her and Tsu, his fists crackling with fire and thunder as he charges on the _bored_ -looking Demon Scythe.

" _If the lamps of linked souls point to your heart, can you hear the echoes now, stronger than words?"_ Kim sings, clear and strong, from inside the cafeteria.

The Demon Scythe scowls as he takes a step back to avoid the boy's attack, a step to the right for the next, and ducks as he brings his feet back together, easily and gracefully dodging the other boy's every move.

" _We barely look each other in the eye, and yet our very fates are entwined."_

"M, come _on!_ " Tsu tugs on her coat to pull her attention away from the fight. "We have to join in, too."

" _Our destinations overlap completely, so run with me through the slippery night."_

ThatIt is that exact moment that M loses herself in a flurry of motions that will forever afterward never be anything sharper than a blur. The moment she and Tsu's eyes meet to the second she finds herself with a short ninja sword in her hands. For a split second, she's lost in the joy of a soul resonance compatibility but it's quickly forgotten when a bullet whizzes by her ear.

"M, pay attention!" Kid yells a distance away, the three lines in his hair crowning his head and wielding two guns upside down.

" _Though the glare that may be too tenacious may carry over into bad dreams…"_

"Right!" M replies, adjusting her grip on the new Tsu-weapon, and charges headfirst into the battle with the Demon Scythe.

" _If the lamps of linked souls point to your heart—"_

She meets the Demon Scythe's eye for a fraction of a second as she brings the blade down on what was supposed to be his shoulder. She misses, of course—

" _Can you hear the echoes now, stronger than words?"_

—but she's not surprised. But the narrowed eyes of the glare she _knows_ he's shooting at _her_ does, however. He doesn't attack her, not outright anyway, but he violently pushes her to the side as he _literally_ dodges a bullet.

" _Do you hear the bells ring?"_

As she stumbles away from the heart of the fight, she swears she hears the deep ringing of a church bell coming from somewhere, but it's a chaotic hell all around her, so whether it was real or not is anyone's guess. She can see why it's called Operation Kishin now: everyone and everything interacting with any member of the Battalion is going insane.

" _And our souls…"_

She spares a glance towards the sky, hoping a glimpse of the vast multitude of stars might clear her mind.

" _Connecting?"_

A slip of paper flits out of the open cafeteria window. Then another, and another—

"It's raining lunch tickets," M murmurs as one falls into her outstretched hand, Tsu's weapon form slipping between her fingers but transforming back into a girl before she hits the ground. The sounds of the battle cease behind them as the slips flutter through the air, soft as the night breeze that carries them through the air and making nary a sound when they hit the ground.

There's a rare moment of silence as the third song ends and they are between songs. The tickets still float to earth like cherry blossoms in the spring, undisturbed by the gaggle of teenagers standing amidst the storm.

But the moment is over before it can fully take hold, really.

It begins with a cheerful, repeating ditty from the guitar, and the drummer joins in soon after the first iteration. Kim's voice, made unrecognizable by both the several layers of voice distortion, begins rapping, but M isn't listening.

Remembering with a start that they're in the middle of a battle with the Demon Scythe, she whirls around only to be faced with…

…only Battalion members standing, still holding their weapons and breathing heavily as the tickets continue to rain to earth. The Demon Scythe is nowhere in sight, vanished without a trace.

One by one, soul resonance wears off. One by one, weapons transform back into people in a flash of light and; one by one, meisters' appearances return to normal. One by one, a squad of child soldiers become once again only children.

A single guitar riff echos through the air, fading into nothing when the last lunch ticket falls to the ground. There's not even a moment of silence to savor either, for the crowd erupts into cheer.

M takes this time to take a good look at the ticket that fell into her hand.

 _Coffee, black. ¥350._

* * *

"So we _didn't_ achieve true resonance? But Tsubaki turned completely into a weapon! She remembers her full name now!"

Tsubaki sorrowfully shakes her head. "Perhaps we should have told you this before, but I have multiple resonant forms."

" _What?!"_

"It's different for everyone who wields me, and they've all tried for the sake of knowledge. We don't know why I'm like this, but for now the assumption is that, aside from regaining _all_ my past memories, my partner would have the ability to choose and change my weapon form based off the situation. Sorry, M."

"Besides," Ox adds, pushing his glasses up as if it would make him look cooler, "you got _none_ of your memories back upon resonation, and nor did anyone recall seeing your physical appearance change. Therefore, you do not have the potential to achieve full resonance with Tsu."

M deflates a little. _If Tsu isn't my partner, then it might take a while to get my memories back,_ she thinks. She looks out the window at the clouds floating in the sky. No one seems to pay attention to her anymore as she sits on one of the couches staring out the window, for they have all gotten lost in their own private conversations, conversations she feels she is not privy to.

* * *

She finds she had wandered into the cafeteria, the place strangely dead and hollow without all the flashing lights, chaotic noise, and people, NPC or not. She stands before a register, black coffee ticket in hand, unsure of whether or not she wants it this late into the day.

With nothing else to do, she feeds the machine the ticket, and it obligingly gives her a cup of coffee, black as the night itself, and nothing more.

There are no cups of creamer or packets of sugar, fake or not, to be found in the entire cafeteria, and so with a sigh, M resigns herself to drinking the terribly bitter coffee as she leans against a balcony rail, watching the little specks of PE students run about the various sports fields.

"You seem quite disappointed."

Startled, M whips her head around to see who spoke to her. "Liz," she says, half a statement, half a greeting.

The blonde girl raises a can of school coffee to her lips in greeting and takes a sip. "That's me."

Silence.

"If it makes you feel any better, the fact that Tsu remembers her full name after resonating with you means she's marginally more compatible with you than any of the other current Battalion members."

Again, silence.

"C'mon, M. Let's go on a walk together."

M does not budge. "Why?"

Liz shrugs. "Just to talk, I suppose. It's only your second day here. I'm sure you still have a lot of questions. Besides—" she pauses to take another sip of coffee— "right now, you remind me a little of how Patty used to be, lost and fragile as glass with no idea how the world around you works. It's endearing."

M stands up properly, clutching her coffee cup in both hands, and gives Liz a small nod.

The smile the blonde gives her is motherly and kind, and it makes M both yearn for something she does not remember, feeling safe and loved.

"There's a reason why Patty and I go by nicknames rather than Patricia and Elizabeth."

It's M's first time even hearing the sisters' full names, so the thought that they went by nicknames, let alone had a reason for doing so, hadn't occurred to her. "Oh?" she asks. "Is it because you guys couldn't remember your full names when you first came?"

Liz's footsteps slow. She shakes her head. "No, we remembered most of our lives up until around the time we died just fine. We're sisters, so it wasn't as though we didn't have a partner close enough to an ideal resonation compatibility to bring back the majority of our memories. It's rather more symbolic of our rebirth into this world."

M takes a sip of coffee, fearful for what it might do to her should she drink more than a bit at a time.

"Our past lives were rough, to say the least. We raised ourselves on the streets, daughters of the prettiest whore in town, and everyone knew it. No one wanted to interact with us for fear of getting their pretty, little reputations tainted."

She pauses, and M notes that the sides of Liz's coffee can are slowly starting to dent.

"But that's all right. Infamy had its perks. We moved to Death City when I was fifteen. No one knew us there, but with nothing but the clothes on our back to our name, our living situation was hardly any different from the city in which we were born.

"We died only a few weeks later. We got mixed up in a gang that had liked to eat human souls, and before even three days passed, Patty and I found ourselves being used in a fight against students from the local school, Shibusen. We're guns in this realm; we were guns in the real world. Some things just never change, except that now our transformations are limited to when we resonate."

She has long since stopped walking, and her expression becomes far-off and almost wistful. M has since quieted her " _oh?"_ s, now completely absorbed in Liz's backstory.

"After devouring the lost souls of our wielders, the Shibusen students shattered us both before we could even transform back into our human forms."

M can only watch as Liz, who had been leaning her back against a wall, slides down into a squat, her trembling hands still clutching the now empty can until it crumpled. But she does not cry. "Say, M…"

"Yes?"

"Do you ever wonder why the world is so cruel?"

With no backstory of her own to offer Liz in return for receiving hers, M struggles to find conversational topics aside from the mundane. She hasn't yet had the time to recover little bits of her memories to chat about, so she asks questions to change topics after her emotions stabilize again.

" _What happens when you get a fatal injury?"_

"You wake up in the infirmary."

" _What about your stuff?"_

"In the same condition as it was when you quote-unquote ' _died_ '."

" _How did you and Patty come to join the Battalion?"_

"We founded it alongside Kid."

" _So you remember why we fight the Demon Scythe?"_

"Unfortunately, those are Kid's reasons and Kid's reasons alone. We're just members."

" _What did Kim mean yesterday when she said you wore the pants in the relationship?"_

"Not answering that."

M pouts, fighting the temptation to shake Liz gently to try and pry an answer out of her. Damn coffee, making her all jittery and touchy-feely… "Why not?"

"Are you really that naïve so as not to figure it out on your own? Come on; based off all your questions, I'd've thought you were a smart girl in your past life."

"You guys are a _thing?"_

"You can make it more blatant than that."

"You're his _girlfriend?_ "

Liz finally takes the time to toss her crumpled coffee can into a garbage can. Her emotions have long since calmed down into something again resembling cheerful. "Yup. But Kid doesn't like to flaunt it, so we don't talk about it in front of others."

"Wouldn't that make Patty the eternal third wheel?"

"Things are only as awkward as you make them, M'darling," she nonchalantly explains, throwing in a nickname for M while she's at it. "It's hard to have an awkward situation when Patty's around, so she never ends up as an eternally awkward third wheel. Not to mention the fact that I don't think she even realizes what third wheeling is. Besides, as much as I love Kid, I'd always choose her over him anyway."

They fall into a pleasant silence as they watch the sun slowly make its way towards the horizon. Dusk is upon them.

M's mind wanders, for lack of a topic, to the Demon Scythe. "Liz," she slowly says.

"Hmm?"

"What's the Demon Scythe's name?"

"I don't know, M'darling."

"But even the NPCs have names. I've heard them talking to each other. How can he not?"

"I never said he didn't have one, just that if he does, I don't know it. I don't think anyone in the Battalion has ever considered that, so I don't think anyone here has an answer for you, either. I suppose if you really wanted to know, you could find him tomorrow and ask."

M thinks about his frightening red eyes, filled with a fishlike apathy, his shark teeth, completely capable of mauling her in a fight, and instinctively shivers. But then she remembers the fight from the night prior and how he was on the defensive the whole time. _Maybe,_ she decides. _Maybe._

Before she can think of anything else to ask Liz about, the blonde girl gets up and stretches. "That's enough for one evening," she tells M. "Let's head back to HQ so that Tsu can bring you to your dorm. I'll have you know, we only crash in the principal's office on operation nights."

* * *

She can't sleep a wink, even long after the moon is over the horizon. In the room she now shares with Tsubaki, all she can hear are the softest, gentlest snores coming from her now roommate as _she_ slept soundly.

Damn coffee.

M pulls herself up into a sitting position and finds herself staring out the window at the moon. She realizes she does that a lot, actually, simply finding herself doing something rather than consciously doing it. She wonders if it's for lack of a memory leaving her with a desire to do something to make up for it, or if it's merely muscle memory that she always finds herself finding herself doing something.

The stars are out, and they're beautiful. She stares at them, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dim light so that she may see them more clearly. Off in the distance, she sees a faint, yellow glow by one of the school buildings. Kim and Jackie are on patrol.

Her eyes tell her to rest, but her brain is bouncing off the walls, wide awake long past midnight. She closes her eyes as she rests her chin on the windowsill, hoping that she might possibly be able to fall asleep if she believes herself enough, but her brain is having none of it. And frankly, her soul is starting to yearn, adding to the ' _Keep M Awake Tonight'_ train running through her head.

She cracks open an eye. Yearning for what? A twitch in her leg tells her to move, to go out on a walk, and she shall be satisfied.

With a sigh, she obeys her listless soul, slipping out of the room to wander the grounds alone at night.

The ground feels pleasantly cool beneath her bare feet, and a warm breeze blows gently passed her, giving her bare arms goosebumps.

She's hardly out for more than a few minutes when the buzzing in the back of her mind dies down and she can think clearly once more. She relishes the quiet, punctuated only by the soft pitter patter of her feet against the concrete. Her heart, once beating erratically in her chest, has now slowed to a more reasonable tempo. The only remnants of the coffee remaining in her system manifest in the fact that she's still wide awake, feeling as if it's three in the afternoon rather than three in the morning.

She takes great care to avoid the girls out for patrol, not wanting to explain to them why she was out and about. She heads instead for a building on the outskirts of the school, one of the many she has yet to explore, taking a path less travelled to pass the time.

She expects the doors to be closed, locked up tight for the night by the faculty, but to her surprise, she finds a side door ajar and slips inside.

To call it pitch black inside the building is a lie. Her eyes are already adjusted to the dim light provided by the eternal crescent moon; plus, a window at the end of the hall lets said dim moonlight stream in, leaving silhouettes and coloring everything into greyscale.

It's not quite silent in the hall. On occasion, a cricket chirps as she silently slips through, her footsteps muffled by the coarse carpet, but that's not what makes it not quite silent. Indeed, she swears she can hear a turbulent melody playing in the distance.

Her heart asks her to follow it. Her brain tells her to avoid it. Her soul does neither. It simply remains still, soaking in the music as it fills a hole in her she didn't realize existed.

It spins a tale of loyalty and trust, taken and shaken and rocked to the core, broken and mended and shattered again. The harmonies grow questionable, and chills run down M's spine as fragments of a life flash before her eyes, solidifying the themes of loyalty and trust, only this time it is their foils are portrayed.

Her breath leaves her, violently so, when the already discordant piano playing turns into a terrible keyboard smash, as if the pianist were simply slamming their hands down wherever they please without any thought for the aesthetic of sound.

Yet, though she is fearful of the chaos, she finds herself drawn to it. Her feet begin to move toward it of their own accord, and she has to force herself to remain rooted to the spot.

The random chords cease for but a beat, and for a moment, M thinks the piece is over. But it returns again, a quiet glissando starting from the highest note down an octave, overlapped by another glissando going down yet another octave, each one louder than the last until the last few low notes are booming through the hall, far louder than any piano has any right to be. The low A hardly even has time to be properly heard or played when all eighty-eight keys are abruptly played in ugly unison.

Its spell over her is broken. M can't help herself: she runs off. Whether fueled more by coffee jitters or fear of the piano playing, she cannot tell for herself. She crashes into her dorm room, slamming the door behind her without a second thought for all the other girls she most probably woke by doing so.

She collapses onto her bed, breathing hard and staring, staring, practically glaring at the door when she hears Tsubaki stir.

"M? Are you okay?" she sleepily asks, her voice hardly more than mere mumbles.

But M's eyes are already closed, her breathing already steady, and in a word, asleep.

* * *

Time passes, as it tends to do. M never acquired any tickets for coffee quite like the stuff she had after Operation Kishin, so she doesn't have it again. She sleeps through the night, early to bed and early to rise, though it doesn't make her particularly more healthy, wealthy, or wise.

She falls into routine with the rest of the Battalion, dicking around on campus during class hours with varying other members, occasionally actually attending out of desire to learn. She takes great care to never interact with the NPCs for long, fearful of obliteration. She notes that while there is variance in their personalities, most of their conversations are devoid of any real meaning. The girls talk about love, the boys talk about their petty feats, with neither gender ever creating a relationship with the other that doesn't end in them eating face in the halls. Hell, sometimes they end up eating face in the halls regardless of gender. None of it matters to M, equally disgusted by all of them.

M sometimes wonders how much longer her love of knowledge and desire to accrue more of it will hold out among the sea of teenage hormones.

It's on one of the days where her avoidance of couples overtakes her desire to learn that, whilst wandering the grounds idly chatting with Tsu, she meets the new boy.

Well, it's less that they _meet_ him. It's more like he drops from the sky (literally or not is anyone's guess) and announces his arrival from the tops of the buildings ( _this_ time most _definitely_ literally).

He cackles, the sound booming all around campus, and its suddenness causes the girls to nearly jump out of their skins. Both of them whip their heads around to see who's speaking and find him standing on his tiptoes, balancing precariously atop the rails around the school roof. His hands are on his hips in a condescending manner, but they can't see his face because it's tipped skyward, sending his roaring laughter to the heavens.

He seems to somehow notice their stunned expressions and with a grin, he leaps down to the ground before them, leaving a blast crater where he lands.

"HELLO, PUNY MORTAL!" he blasts, despite the fact that his volume is _completely_ unnecessary (he's standing _right_ in front of them!). "HELLO, PRETTY MORTAL! IT IS I, YOUR GOD, THE GREAT AND GRAND _BLACK STAR_ , COME TO REDEEM YOUR SORRY BUMS—"

M can't help it; her eardrums are going to burst if she has to listen to any more of this _Black Star_ 's speech. Seeing red, she marches forth— if looks could kill, the boy would have woken up in the infirmary a hundred times by now— and plants herself right in front of him. He spares her a look, but it's hardly warning enough for what's about to happen.

* * *

Her handprint is still imprinted on the blue-haired boy's cheek, bright red and declaring to all the world what happened to him, when she and Tsu lead him to the principal's office for the drilldown from Kid. He whines the whole way there, but M warns him that she still has ample steam left to blow off if he would so care to be blasted by it. The only reason he doesn't get a matching handprint on his other cheek is because Tsu has the quick wit and strength to restrain her.

Strangely enough, the Black Star boy, as obnoxiously egocentric as he had been acting but a few minutes ago, follows her every command, becoming as meek and gentle as a lamb when she tells him to leave M alone. Granted, it's also paired with the most terrifying death glare she has ever seen in her life, and most definitely one that does _not_ match Tsu's normally soft and kind expression, but considering the fact he had _just_ been declaring himself God above them, M decides it's not within his normal character to be cowed so easily.

She's _still_ fuming when they open the door into Battalion Headquarters, less so at the fact that she's the _puny_ mortal (she has long since come to terms with her waif-like build) and more so at the fact that a literal _slap to the face_ did less to rein in his ego than one _look_ from Tsubaki.

She hopes she doesn't have to try and resonate with him later, but when she mutters it aloud to Liz when she walks in a minute or two later, the latter laughs and says if she feels that strongly against him, no one's going to make her; it's highly unlikely that they would be compatible with that attitude, anyway.

Kid is summoned soon after (he'd been in the school garden, arranging the flowers down to the petal), and once sufficient levels of cleanliness and symmetry are achieved, he settles into the principal's chair and attempts to give the blue boy the same speech he had given M on her first day. It's clearly futile halfway through when Black Star, upon realizing he's going to be told the same things again but in reverse order, promptly defenestrates himself, but it's _imperative_ that Kid finishes the recital. Even if he does so to a room empty of everyone but himself, since all the Battalion members present run after Black Star.

It's little surprise that the introduction of the new character of Black Star opens up a whole new can of worms.

* * *

M sighs. It's been but three hours since the boy arrived on campus, and already, she needs a three hour nap to recover all the energy he's sapped from her fragile, introverted body. At least he's stopped calling them mortals. After finding out that none of them can die and are therefore all technically _im_ mortal, he declares himself God among gods, but, still recognizing their quote-unquote " _godly status"_ refers to them on a more equal level of _dudes._

Nevermind the fact that not all the Battalion members consider dude to be a gender-neutral term, Kid's a dude, Liz's a dude, they're _all_ dudes.

But meetings are meetings. Everyone's known that there's to be a meeting to discuss the next operation for a while now, and M _hates_ it when she's out of the loop.

She hears the wailing long before she enters the room, although she can't comprehend any of the muffled blubbering that comes along with it. It puts her on edge, making her question whether or not she really wanted to go to the briefing this time around. It could be a lone exception, an absence on her record before she establishes herself, and she can always get the details from Liz or Tsubaki or one of the other Battalion members later anyway.

Such are the things she contemplates with her hand on the doorknob, on the edge of leaving whatever drama currently happening behind said door, _behind_ said door, never to be heard of again unless someone decides to tell her about it later.

The intense wailing seems to have died down, replaced by sobbing, so at least if she chooses to enter, her eardrums won't burst. So with the thought that she'll probably regret entering buried in the back of her mind, she twists the knob and steps into headquarters.

" _Tsubaki?_ "

Her eyes dart back and forth between the ponytailed girl and the short, blue-haired boy whom she's clutching and burying her face into as she cries and cries and _cries_. Black Star allows it without complaint, his entire god-complex seemingly dropped. She can see it in his eyes when he spares her a glance for just a moment, only to return his full attention to Tsu. He says nary a thing to anyone, but he holds her in his arms and strokes her hair and _wow_ , M is _positive_ that there's something more going on between them now.

M looks at the other members present— currently only Liz, Kid, Patty, and some rando whose name she doesn't even _know_ — with a desperation in her eyes born out of confusion and the desire to _know_. Their expressions are that of awkward shock (except for Patty, who instead is ignoring the entire fiasco and drawing on the walls, giggling all the while), and they can offer her no explanation.

It's Tsubaki herself that tells them. Well, rather, there's finally some coherency to her muffled sobs, and she weeps, " _I killed my brother! I was a murderer, and I killed my own brother!_ "

M, having absolutely _no_ idea how to handle this new revelation, shoots a horrified look at Liz as Tsu dissolves into sobs again. Liz gestures for M to _just go, we'll handle this. We'll tell you about it when she's better._

With another round of tears seemingly on its way, M looks regretfully back at Tsubaki before she turns to leave. But her heart lies easy in her chest, for it knows, it just _knows_ , she'll be in good hands, both figuratively and literally.

She stares at her shoes as she exits, and because of that nearly crashes into the next person about to enter.

"M? Is everything okay in HQ? Aside from the blatant crying, we're supposed to be going _into_ the office for the meeting, not coming out the door looking like you just saw a ghost."

M looks up, straight into the bright, concerned eyes of Kim. She opens her mouth to respond, " _Yes, everything's fine. I'm not sure what's going on, but it's fine,"_ but knowing it to be a complete and utter lie, shuts it and shakes her head instead.

"Yikes," Kim says, grabbing her arm and tugging her away. "Meeting's probably postponed until tomorrow, then, so let's go!"

M blinks but walks with Kim anyway. "Go where?"

The pink-haired girl merely shrugs and pulls M along. "Wherever the wind takes us."

M falls in step with the other girl.

* * *

They're standing on one of the balconies, sipping canned coffee from the school vending machines as they appreciate the dusk. Hours have passed since Kim whisked her away from the drama happening in headquarters, and M is grateful for the distraction. Tsubaki's words haunt her mind; of all the people she would have ever thought to have previously been a killer, she never _ever_ would have guessed it to be the sweet, motherly Tsubaki, and she tells this to her companion.

"Killed her own brother, you say?" murmurs Kim, almost to herself, as she takes a sip of coffee. "I have to say, that's one of the most brutal backstories I've heard to date." She throws M a rather sly look. "Unless, of course, yours ends up taking the cake, hmm?"

M looks away, her heart aching for a past she has yet to even remember. "We won't know until I find my partner," she says. Seeing just this one small glimpse into Tsu's past, she's no longer sure if she wants to find them, even if doing so would satisfy the terrible yearning that flowed like a fountain of tears from her soul.

"Mm, well that's true." Kim stretches and yawns. "But I doubt your story's that bad. Backstories as tragic as Tsu's aren't exactly a dime a dozen." She takes another sip of coffee. "All I really was when I was alive was an outcast."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I don't exactly have one of those sob stories like Tsu seems to have acquired. I was merely shunned from all the groups I ever tried to join. Mortals, witches—"

" _Witches_?"

Kim bites her lip just a bit before ultimately deciding to let it go. "Yeah, I was a witch when I was alive. Big deal. But my magic— healing magic— didn't exactly go with the natural destructive flow that runs through all other witches, so they ostracized me.

"So I went to Shibusen," she tells M, who is surprised yet again at the mention of the school that taught the students that killed Liz and Patty in their past lives. "I signed up to be a meister there, and they accepted me. Because even with a soul protection spell on to disguise my status as a witch, it was still strong enough to be a good meister."

She pauses, a faint smile on her face as she assumedly thinks about a few cherished memories from her life at Shibusen. But her gaze soon falls from the now-setting sun to the lip of her coffee can. She swirls the remaining liquid around a few times before taking another gulp of the bitter drink. M finds herself staring at her, her mouth every so slightly agape, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"I thought I could trust my weapon when I told her what I was. But I couldn't. She betrayed my secret to Shinigami-sama, who struck me down with his own death scythe. I died a traitor to both witches and mortals alike, shunned from both groups I thought would be my family." Unlike Liz when she revealed her backstory, Kim's eyes are growing moist. She's tearing up, and in a panic, M realizes she has no idea how to comfort her.

But it's okay. Kim wipes away the tears before they can even fall from her eyes and smiles again. "But it's okay," she says, "because the people in the Battalion love and understand me. They all have the same hard luck stories as me, so now I can pack up all my care and woe and practice singing low." Just because she wiped the tears away doesn't mean they can't return, and when she turns to look back at M, M can clearly see her eyes are watering again. "They've all been lifesavers. Especially Jackie. She's a good partner."

The sun's light rapidly fades from sight, erasing Kim's expression with the dark that falls soon after. M can hardly see anything with the daylight gone and the moon not yet shining, but Kim tugs on her sleeve.

"C'mon," says she, "We have a meeting to attend tomorrow."


	2. o'er fields of green and skies of blue

**Word Count:** 12,470

* * *

M stands before her dorm room door, contemplating whether or not she should enter or not. It's not as though there's crying coming from the other side. By all means, she should absolutely walk through the door and crash on her bed by the window.

But something stops her from doing so.

So while her brain begs her to go to sleep— she has a meeting first thing tomorrow for goodness' sake!— her heart sings its thanks for turning heel, and she closes her eyes to allow her soul to guide her through the dark.

She winds up before the same slightly ajar door of the coffee buzz night, and, lo and behold, it's yet again slightly ajar. Holding her breath (in case whatever played the discordant music was playing again and didn't want her there) and hoping to hear something beautiful again, she tiptoes into the building.

There is only silence. She plods softly through the hall, creeping carefully towards the stairwell at the end of the hall, listening intently for any little noise.

She reaches the stairs, and there is still nothing. Carefully, she smooths out her skirt and sits down on one of the bottom stairs, waiting, waiting for the music to come.

The hall is dark, and she can hardly see her own hand centimeters away from her face at first. But time creeps by, and her eyes gradually adjust. She can nearly make out what the sign above the door next to her says. Nearly.

Moonbeams creep through the window, setting the floor alight. She blinks, squinting at the sudden brightness, but her eyes soon adjust. She looks back at the sign above the neighboring door and, unsurprisingly, finds she can read it.

 _Practice Room #6_

Is she in the music building? She's surprised she hadn't yet realized such a thing. It _was_ piano music she heard that night. Rather hard to tote a piano from building to building to practice.

It's now that she finally begins to hear music again, but it's a far cry from what played the last time she had been here. It's soft, gentle, so delicate it seems if she even _breathes_ too hard, it would be destroyed. It tugs at her eyelids, making them grow heavy with sleep. Her brain fights it valiantly, knowing if she falls asleep now she shan't be able to make it back to her dorm before morning, and, _oh_ , how on _earth_ would she be able to explain _this_ late night tryst to Tsubaki? But without her heart, already fast asleep, it's all for naught.

Her soul merely takes it in. It doesn't fill the same hole she realizes _aches_ to be filled, nor does it spark the yearning the music from the other night had. It's pretty music, but not what she needs.

Still fighting sleep, she asks her soul what it wants, how it can be complete again.

There is no reply. She finds herself leaning against the stairwell wall, her eyes shutting of their own accord. Again, she feels the ache in her soul that longs to be filled, and again, she begs her soul to tell her what it is.

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping; hill and vale are slumber sleeping. All the world is asleep. So should she. The melody washes over her, soft, gentle, and familiar in a way that is not the same as the original piece she heard. Her soul does not speak, refusing to give voice to the longing for the longing for the mystery.

She gives in to her heart's desires, and there on the stairwell she falls asleep, listening to the lullaby of the discordant pianist.

* * *

 _He allows the final note of the piece to dissipate into the air, not wanting to cut it short by lifting the damper pedal and rob it of its youth. He stares at the blank wall beyond the piano. It's as immaculate as ever, and something terrible within him wishes to mar the perfect blankness that is the wall. He's tired of staring down an ideal he'll never achieve._

 _He sighs and puts the lid over the keys again, lazily propping his chin up on his elbow when it's down. He remembers so much of a life gone by, more than anyone in this simple afterlife would had they not found their partners, yet all of them are still but fleeting fragments, disconnected from one another yet still all very much parts of himself._

 _The piano, for example. He hates it. He hates it, he hates it, he_ hates _it._

 _Yet still, he plays on._

 _Muscle memory? Perhaps._

 _But perhaps more because it fills a hole in his soul just a little. A hole he feels has no bottom, out of which loneliness crawls from its depths, eating him alive, swallowing him whole._

 _He scowls, pushing thoughts of his soul being long gone. They remain in the back of his mind, of course, but when there's an entire battalion of people insisting it to be gone, or corrupted, or even flat-out evil, such a thing remains inevitable._

 _He rises from the piano bench and noiselessly steps out of the practice room. He knows there's someone outside, listening to him. Waiting for him to play for her. That's why he didn't work on the piece that his soul truly sang. She has no right to be looking for or listening to such a part of himself. No one can bear to hear the rawness of that piece and continue on without hating or fearing him._

 _He bares his teeth slightly. Perhaps he'll scare her away with just a glance, and then she'll leave him in peaceful solitude for the rest of the night. But his gaze softens when he actually sees her, sound asleep on the stairs._

 _He scoffs aloud (but not too loudly). What an idiot._

* * *

She _swears_ she fell asleep on the stairs the night before. She _knows_ she did. But the soft blankets nested around her as she lies on the bed _beg_ to differ.

M blinks the sleep slowly out of her eyes. The early morning sun greets her quiet dorm, devoid of all noise but her roommate's soft snores.

The door abruptly opens, and, stifling a shriek of surprise, M sees a rather sullen looking Anya poking her head in.

"Wake-up call," she tells M, completely deadpan. "Just for you, though. Liz says if Tsu's not feeling up to attending the meeting she doesn't have to go."

"Right," M replies, jumping out of bed. "Thank you." Anya politely closes the door so that she may change in privacy, and it's not two minutes later before M is out the door, on her way to HQ and pulling her unkempt hair into her regular twin tails. Anya has already left her behind, but she doesn't really care.

She rubs her temples. She had a dream the night before. Not a nightmare, as she notes many of the other Battalion members are prone to. A _dream._ But already, the details have escaped; its plot, if any, long since fled from her head.

Ah, well. No matter.

The lights dim the instant she walks into the office. "Good, you're here," Kid grunts as the projector screen comes down behind him. "Now we can begin the briefing."

* * *

In the end, she's not even picked for the operation. By all means, it should have made her fume, (She's more than competent enough to go out on an operation that didn't involve stealing lunch tickets!) but it was more of a relief than anything. She didn't listen one bit during the briefing, so she had no idea how to perform her part had she been chosen. Her thoughts are too preoccupied with the music of the dream she had the night prior, the only bit that stayed with her through it all and she therefore clings to.

She gazes out a classroom window. Why did she even bother to come to class when it was never even in her plan to even pay attention? The same brooding, daydreamy effect can be achieved just by leaning against a balcony rail or whatever. The classroom is ornamental, really.

The flash of white outside catches her attention, however. Her dreamy expression falls away for just a second, replaced by one of surprise. Yet, she sees it again. Knowing it can only belong to the Demon Scythe, she books it, regardless of the teacher yelling after her.

No one ever chases after the Battalion members, and this time is no exception. She's out of the building and on the track in a heartbeat, scanning the area for the Scythe when her heart skips a beat.

 _What am I doing?_

What the Demon Scythe did in his own time is none of any of their concerns, as long as it didn't involve them. So dashing around campus? None of her business.

She looks down at her feet and notices a corner of something that must have been white at some point beneath her shoe. She shifts her feet and picks up the slip of paper.

The back is blank, but the front practically gives her a heart attack.

 _Coffee, black. ¥350._

And, in a nearly illegible scrawl in a bit of free space—

 _Enjoy your jitters._

Her mind can't formulate words at the moment, but it sure can rattle off punctuation: _**? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?**_

She looks around, desperate for an explanation. Was the blur of white she saw through the classroom simply the lunch ticket blowing through on a particularly strong gust of wind? It had to be; she had to have come up with the idea the Demon Scythe was running around on the whim that no one had seen him lately. She's becoming paranoid, because the only other explanation she can currently think of aside from that is that it's a g—

She shakes her head. She'd seen him in action plenty of times during their weekly Operation Kishins. He is firmly and decidedly against the Battalion. Which is good because they're not called the _Anti-Demon Scythe_ Battalion for nothing. The idea that he's—

M slaps her own cheek, hard, to stop herself from entertaining such ridiculous thoughts. Where are they even coming from? Hah, if she didn't know herself she'd think she's—

"No," she says aloud. She looks at the now-crumpled ticket in her hand. She doesn't even like coffee this black. Not that he'd know. Not that it matters if he knows or not.

She slaps herself again, harder. Practically growling, she pockets the ticket anyway and storms off to the building she had previously only visited at night, hoping the discordant pianist could distract her, if they were there.

But she finds the door that is usually ajar to be closed and locked up tight. But _why?_ If anything, it should be locked in the dead of _night_ when _no one_ is supposed to be on campus aside from the dorms, not on a regular school day during _class hours_!

She stares balefully up at one of the second-story windows, all of them closed. She doesn't know _what_ she wants from them. (She actually does know.) It's not like one of them will open up to let the fresh air in and some piano music out. (Though she does rather hope.)

Nothing happens, and try as she might, the thoughts keep creeping into her mind, thoughts unbidden, thoughts forbidden to the owner.

With a scowl, she turns heel and practically storms away from the building.

* * *

She's not sure _who_ she can talk to at the moment. Tsu has yet to even leave their room for the day, Liz is out with the Operation squad, and she doesn't trust any of the boys any farther than she can throw them.

She knocks on the door to Kim and Jackie's room.

" _Coming~_ " Kim sings, and sure enough, the door opens.

"Kim, I need someone to talk to." As much as M hates admitting it, as much as she _hates_ seeking out help, hates talking about her problems with other people, she swallows her pride and asks for help.

Kim raises an eyebrow. "What sort of lunch tickets have you got?"

M blinks in surprise. "What?"

The pink-haired girl crosses her arms and shrugs. "Well, you know what they say: if you can do something, never do it for free. You're asking me for a service; I'm asking for a charge. And since money's useless here, lunch tickets will suffice."

This isn't a roadblock M anticipated. She thought that since Kim had shared her previous life with her, nearly cried in front of her, that they're sort of like brethren now.

She must notice the shock in M's face because she drops her arms down to her sides and sighs. "Look, just because I told you about my sob story doesn't mean we're like sisters now. Even then, this is a pretty sister-y thing to do, charge for advice. You either pay me a couple lunch tickets for things I want and spill your guts, or you find someone else to listen to you."

M pokes her head into the room. "Jackie?"

"Sorry, we're a package deal," the guitarist replies indifferently replies as she lies on a bed, lazily flipping through a magazine.

A little reluctantly, M pulls the black coffee ticket out of her pocket and tries to hand the crumpled slip over to Kim. She doesn't like coffee this dark, she reminds herself, it was absolutely terrible the one time she had it. But to her surprise, the witch doesn't even make an effort to take it.

" _Black coffee_? M, are you insane? No one drinks the school's black coffee! It's infamous for its horribly bitter taste and ability to keep you awake for hours after dark. I need my sweet, sweet beauty sleep. Plus, it's all crumpled and scribbled on. I don't think the machines will be able to read it even if I _did_ like coffee like this."

M pockets her ticket, feeling dejected that her only means of payment failed. She ignores the twinge of relief hidden beneath. "That's all I've got right now."

"Sorry, but I can't help you without some returns."

"I understand."

The door shut in front of her, leaving M to stare at the wood grain in silence.

Silence, that is, until a loud _crash!_ and _thump!_ and perhaps even a cat's mrowl of surprise shocks her out of her daze with a yelp.

It is no cat that's standing before her when she turns around, but rather the same god-complexed boy with the spiky blue hair she last saw comforting a bawling Tsubaki. He absently brushes the wall dust off, hardly noticing her until the dust finally gets to her lungs and she begins to hack and cough.

"Are you okay?" he asks when she's done.

"Yes, I'm just fine and dandy. Almost coughed up a lung there, but it's no big deal," she replies, her voice dry in both the literal and sarcastic sense. She clears her throat and fights the urge to burst into another fit of coughing but still manages to give Black Star a piercing, green glare.

He shrugs, either oblivious to her sarcasm or not caring at all. "Cool; can you help me find Tsubaki? She—"

"She's in our room still. She doesn't seem ready to come out yet, so I'd respect that." She's feeling rather daring now, folding her arms across her chest and looking him in the eye as she speaks as though she were daring him to look down upon her.

"But she said we'd talk." His expression, already a soft neutral, falls. "After it got too late yesterday, she said we'd talk tomorrow. She said that the good partnerships she's seen start with knowing what the other's been through to break down any barriers left between souls."

"Communication _is_ also an important part of any relationship," M reluctantly adds, the fact that Tsu and Star are partners only just now dawning on her. (It slipped her mind that memories return upon proper resonance, okay?)

She is partnerless now, but living without knowing who she used to be doesn't sound bad. Not when it seems like everyone and their mother has a tragic backstory.

She sighs. _She_ still needs someone to talk to, but a distraction is a distraction.

"So… can you take me to her?"

 _Huh. Maybe there's more to this kid than a loud mouth and a god complex._

She wordlessly gestures for him to follow her and walks him to the dorm she shares with Tsubaki. She even opens the door for him and everything.

"M? Is that you?" Tsu asks, and it actually breaks M's heart a little to hear it. It's muffled by a pillow and raspy, too. The toll of her new memories must be heavy.

Star weasels passed her and steps inside. "It's me."

M pokes her head in just to make sure they're okay.

Tsu's finally sitting up in bed, looking a little worn and ragged, but she gives M a tired smile. "You can come in, too, if you want," she says. "You're looking like you need some chicken soup for the soul."

She swallows. "I—" She's put on the spot; she needs someone to talk to, but this is _their_ time. They're partners now, having time to sort themselves out. She's not part of that.

"If you need to talk, your god is always here to listen."

Both Tsu and M turn their gazes to Black Star, sitting cross-legged on the carpet with his arms crossed and staring a little impatiently at M.

"Followers who don't interact with you are no good, but a god who doesn't listen to his people is no better."

The anger she could have felt at being pulled into this following of his without her consent is overtaken by the relief that she has someone, someone even as new and ridiculous as Black Star, to talk to. Beggars can't be choosers, and this never would have been her first choice to talk about her growing… _something_ for the Demon Scythe that seems to be growing in her lately, but a distraction is a distraction.

She closes the door behind her, plops down on her bed, and snuggles up with her blanket and pillow.

* * *

It seems the fleeting fragments of memories Tsubaki had before resonating with Star hold true with the bigger picture. The most prominent memory that she received was, of course, killing her brother. She absorbed his soul, and after a night and morning of organizing her thoughts and memories, she sees why. But seeing why doesn't make it any more justified.

A tsubaki, a camellia, is the scentless flower for which she was named. It's as though she had no willpower of her own in life; she drifted along the stream of life without resistance, always envious of those who tried to fight.

Killing him had been just another job, assigned to her and her partner by Shinigami-sama. She was given the command, she followed through. Then, when it was done, she shut the memory out and compartmentalized like her meister taught her to do, as if he had been just another job. Which he was.

She wishes she hadn't seen things like that.

Black Star tells his tale with a sense of detachment, as if he's severing his current self from the one he was when alive. Perhaps it's because he's already done that by giving himself a new name the second he arrived in the afterlife, refusing to even give what his name in life had been, but it's still disturbing how he so casually describes all the brutal crimes he committed when alive, from petty thieving to flat-out murder.

He was still but an April child, dreaming of June in the spring of his youth, when they came for him and all his clan.

The meisters and weapons of Shinigami-sama himself, that year's graduating class of Shibusen, out doing their final practical exam.

If Tsubaki was a scentless flower in life, he was but a tender young bud, awaiting summer's bloom.

 _Nipped in the bud, this one,_ a meister commented when he was left completely at their mercy.

 _And what a shame, too,_ their weapon replied. _He looks like he could have been one of the greats._

His soul was reaped, and the Hoshizoku were no more.

Shibusen.

Thinking about it, M notices that _that_ school is a single thread weaving all the stories she's heard together. The _one_ thing that unites them, aside from the Demon Scythe, is Shibusen.

She can't say it's unfamiliar on her tongue. Hell, it feels downright familiar, as if she said it a thousand times before.

She wonders if it's the reason they're all here, in this high school purgatory, trapped together fighting a boy who is also a scythe. She frowns. Are they all victims of Shibusen's system? And the Demon Scythe, too; is he but another casualty of the school system?

It's quiet between the three teenagers holed up in a dorm room. Black Star fidgets on the ground, picking at the plastic casing of a mechanical pencil he found underneath a bed; Tsubaki runs her fingers through her hair, brushing, brushing, brushing it despite its lack of tangles; and M is simply curled up on her bed, hugging her knees to her chest as she rocks back and forth.

It's gone on for a while now, much longer than the time between Tsu and Black Star's stories.

"So, M. Do you have anything to say?" Tsu quietly asks at long last. "It really looked like you did when we were settling in."

She stops rocking for a moment and looks up, her expression no longer glassy. She blinks a few times, for it was as though she had forgotten how to think at all in an attempt to process their stories.

She reaches into her pocket, but freezes when she feels the lunch ticket brush up against her fingers, her heart lurching in her chest as she _remembers_ , and the thoughts that plagued her for that short span of time on the field fill her mind once more.

She leaves the ticket in her pocket but sits properly again. Spinning her legs in tiny circles as they hang off the edge of the bed, she says, "I've been having strange thoughts lately."

"…Yes, about?"

"Homicide?"

"The Demon Scythe."

" _Black Star!_ "

"No, Black Star, not homicide," M replies. She takes on a faraway look. "I know Kid always tells us he's our opposition, and I _see_ that, we're against each other, but sometimes… sometimes it doesn't really seem like he's really all that interested in fighting us. I don't know, I just—"

"Woah there," Black Star interrupts. "Please don't tell me you're going to pull a romance novel cliché and tell us he's not a monster, just misunderstood, because that's— that's just _eugh_." He even shudders in disgust for emphasis.

Her face reddens. (She tells herself it's because she's offended, _not_ embarrassed.) " _No!_ " she yells. "I just think there's more to him than meets the eye."

When she's dished up two servings of _blank stares_ , she heaves an exasperated sigh, wondering, _wondering_ if she trusts them enough to be more specific with her thoughts.

Black Star sticks the pencil up his nose after a moment, and she decides _no,_ she does _not._

* * *

It's evening, and the coffee's as terrible and bitter as the first cup she had, but _damn_ if it didn't lift her mood. It's long past dusk, or sunset; she's in the twilight zone now.

She holds her coffee close to her chest (as if it'll warm her heart the same way as—) and gazes up at the deep purple sky. The first faint, silver stars are already showing their faces, twinkling and winking down at her from above. It's a very lovely sight, but it also makes her frown. Her city, her city. What happened to her city lights?

She knows it's just a hazy memory nagging at the back of her mind, the only one she really has aside from M, that it has nothing to do with who or where she is now, but it sticks. Especially so since she hasn't yet recovered a single memory since her arrival. Even the song that had been in her mind this morning, even its melody has escapes her now, just a few hours later.

Already, she feels the buzzing energy of _caffeine_ coursing through her veins. Perhaps she _would_ enjoy her jitters, just as he'd wi— Anyway. She wonders if the discordant pianist would return tonight? It's unlikely, she decides, since it was locked earlier. But if she's going to be up all night on a coffee buzz, she might as well check… _later_. For now, she wants nothing more than to wander campus in the dark, alone with her thoughts.

Despite the later hours, there are still a few classroom lights on, not to mention a great quantity of the dorms do, too. All is quiet, too; it's a Thursday night, after all. Despite it being the afterlife, those NPCs _have_ to get their homework done _somehow_ , and just like real, souled humans, tend to procrastinate until the last minute.

Well, she can hear the distant strums, drums, and hums coming from one of the empty classrooms. Kim and her girls are practicing, as they do every Thursday for their weekly Operation Kishin performances.

M stands under their particular window during a pause. Their music is as wonderful as ever, in her opinion; they've even been talking of performing a new piece tomorrow. But though she can't make out the snippets of conversation that drift down from the open window, she sure can read the tones. They're discordant, bickering, but it's not serious. She takes a tiny sip of coffee, watching their silhouettes move back into position, and they play again.

Had she not already swallowed, she thinks she would have accidentally snorted her coffee because the tone of this new piece is so very _different_ from most of their usual pieces. Their usuals are either high-energy and fast paced with a strong beat, or their opening number, which begins slow and casual, but the beat drops pretty soon into the song.

This piece doesn't even start with the guitar, or the drums, or even some unaccompanied vocals. No, it starts with _piano_ (too simple and delicate to be her discordant piano pl— _when had they become_ _ **her**_ _piano player?_ ), there's no percussion bit at all, and the guitar sounds all out of place; really, a more refined string instrument would fit a _lot_ better with the piece's tone.

M can't make out what Kim is singing, but it's definitely been composed by her: rather than being _ridiculously_ low for her range (and therefore requiring those voice filters) or a little bit too high, it's just right. She can sing softly without her voice sounding weak, as often happens when she uses her head voice. (It was either devoid of all power, or far too projecting for the sound team to amplify safely), and she can hit every note without straining, as often happens when they hit the fuzzy line between her head and chest voices. Everything else the girl band plays are mere covers of songs of bands who left their sheet music behind a long time ago.

It _could_ be a new opening piece; perhaps they've grown tired of using the same one over and over again? But won't Hiro throw a hissy fit when he discovers the _one_ useful thing he's contributed on record has become obsolete? M makes it a point to interact with the pansy as little as she can, but he seems like the kind of guy who would do that.

It's nothing like their climax music, the stuff that gets the audience all riled up and ready to offer up their meal passes. It's too quiet, too _demure_ ; if anything it's closer to a _lullaby_ than to a rock piece. Well, not a lullaby, she knows how those sound, but a ballad of sorts. Ish. (She never was best with musical genres, _okay?_ )

By all means, it doesn't seem like anything their band would ever play in a million years. She doubts there's even a keyboard to be found in the cafeteria, let alone an actual piano of any sort. So why would the band decide to play something like this? The Battalion has Operation Kishin practically down to a _science_ ; the entire process is streamlined for efficiency, made such by its sheer frequency. No other mission they've ever done has been done as many times as Operation Kishin; the _band_ should have its repertoire down to the last sixteenth note. Why bother potentially botching a mission with a risk like this?

Her coffee is half-finished and growing cold by the time they take another break. It's likely past midnight now. TGIF, she muses. Not really wanting to make her horrible coffee (even though its bitterness is rapidly growing on her. Man, maybe that scy—) taste even _worse_ by letting it become stone cold, she chugs the rest of it in a gulp and a half, tossing the empty paper cup into a waste basket.

She has all night. Lots of time before she'll want to visit the music wing, if it's even open.

She chooses to wander campus as the Demon Scythe frequently does. She's never seen him do it, aside from that first night when Liz pointed him out to her, but she wonders if she might cross paths with him tonight? Her thoughts have been more than a little preoccupied by him as of late (damn coffee), so perhaps he's deserving of a little ass-whooping (she wants to thank him for the coffee), nevermind the fact she doesn't have a partner to even properly fight him with (she doesn't need one if all she wants to do is thank him fo—).

* * *

The thought that she's slipped into a routine in this afterlife hits M like shit on the fan.

Yet she can't deny that it's true. She knows the casual rhythm of the school during the day, knows when Liz gets her coffee fixes, knows the regular patrol routes of all the partner pairs, knows how an Operation Kishin can run like a well-oiled machine, even when parts are rearranged to make room for a new Battalion member.

The only wild card among all she knows is the Demon Scythe. _What_ classes he shows up to (if any at all), _when_ he arrives, scowling, at their Friday concerts, _why_ he's even an obstacle ( _why_ he's called the Demon Scythe). He is the variable that shakes up the monotony, that throws everyone off and keeps them on their toes. She's not sure if she should be grateful or not for his intervention, but someone used to always tell her, " _variety is the spice of life!_ "

For some reason, the phrase pissed her off, but perhaps it had been the person saying it and not the phrase.

She lies on the concrete facing the sky, not unlike how she was when she first woke up. It's relaxing to watch the stars slowly drift across the horizon, to allow herself to simply _exist_.

She bolts upright the second she hears the footsteps. In a blind panic, she jumps to her feet, sprints at whoever it is, and positively _decks_ them in the face. She's pretty sure she hears a horrible, sickening _crunch_ when it happens and, as she runs from the scene, hopes she didn't break a finger or something awful like that.

Whoever they are, they're spewing obscenities at her now, but they don't take the effort to run after her. She briefly turns to see who it is— ah, Ox, wielding Harvar. Well, her conscience can be clear now; he really deserves an actual ass-whooping for how rude and obnoxious he is at times. She thanks her lucky stars it hadn't been the Demon Scythe; she has no method of defense without a partner. (She's not sure if she'd be able to live with the guilt if she hurt him like that.)

((She's even less sure why her thoughts have been going in the direction the have been lately, or why she's even gone off and begun _letting_ them happen now.))

She stands before the music building, out of breath, almost out of adrenaline. But the caffeine is still coursing strong, if making her jittery and buzzed. Still panting, she throws her gaze up to the upper floors. None of the lights are on.

But her eyes adjust, and when she looks down, the door is once again slightly ajar, the shadows seeping out from within the building inviting her in. Wanting to hear the discordant pianist again, her face splits into a grin, and she runs inside. (She doesn't even think about why it would be open now, at night, when it was locked during the day.)

Her footsteps slow to a stop as she reaches the stairwell at the end of the hall, and suddenly, she's embarrassed. Embarrassed to be so desperate to hear the piano playing again, embarrassed that she didn't even bother to be stealthy this time. Whoever the discordant pianist is, they surely know she's here today.

M sinks down on the stairs. As luck has it, she's not prone to blushing, so she doesn't have to worry about burning her hands when she uses them to hide her face. She'll leave soon— there's no point in staying for long if all she can do is sit and mope— but first she needs to collect herself.

And then, she hears it. It's still not the same piece she heard that first night, but it's a far cry from a lullaby. Bright, clashing, (though not as much as the original one) and very distinctly _yellow_ , it plays, rather muffled, through what should in all honesty be mostly soundproof rooms. And sure, she'd been able to hear through the walls before, but it had always been muted. This, while _muffled_ , is most definitely _not_ muted.

She has to hold in a gasp. Perhaps they are deaf to have not heard her footsteps echo through the empty hall, yet despite the possibility, they still play.

She falls with a sigh against the wall adjacent to the practice room. She needn't worry about being secretive now, unless a Battalion member happens to notice her whereabouts, if the discordant pianist can't hear her come in. Buzzed from a pile of all _sorts_ of things, she closes her eyes and listens to the music.

* * *

 _Oh, he hears her all right. Her tiptoes from last night carried all the grace of a drunken ass to his refined ears; the sound of her heavy footsteps when she crashes through the door tonight are like rolls of thunder booming right above him: loud and tempestuous with emotion._

 _For a moment he can't even play, not that he can't hear himself, but because he has to hold in his laughter, disallowing himself from even sniggering for fear that her ears are as keen as his own and the subsequent possibility that she can hear him._

 _He settles down soon enough, adjusts his posture, and contemplates a piece to play for her tonight. He's quite amused that she comes to listen to him, though he knows it's not really_ him _she's looking for, (But he is, deep down, beginning to realize he enjoys her disembodied company.) even if the other night he wanted to chase her away for good._

 _But her face is like an angel when she sleeps, and upon seeing it, his soft heart begged his unfeeling brain not to leave her on the steps, to leave her to a crick in the neck and one hell of a stiff back when she woke up in the morning. Rather reluctantly, he had complied, but the moment he hefted her slight frame into his arms, he felt something stir deep within, a part of himself he hadn't felt for a long, long time._

 _His soul, of which he is usually unaware of when not playing the song it sings on the piano, is set aflame within him. It's a shock for sure; he nearly drops the sandy-haired girl right then and there, but, adjusting to the feeling of it (again? He dares not try to remember), he wonders why it came to life again so suddenly, and why it sits differently than when he plays its song._

 _(It fills a hole in his soul that has been empty for far, far too long)_

 _He drums his fingers on his thigh, still contemplating what he should play for her. As much as he would like to see her sleeping face again, the lullaby he played for her the night before was far too simple and boring for his tastes._

 _Playing the song of his soul is also out of the question. He only played it for her on the first night, when he heard her footsteps plodding through the hall, because perhaps its dark, emotional, cacophony would scare her off. Which it did; he heard her run off and not return. (For a few weeks anyway.) It's a piece he doesn't care to show the world, let alone some nosy girl who, by all accounts, must most certainly hate him (even if she doesn't realize it). That first night had been just one exception, for one good reason._

 _He realizes he hasn't practiced a sonatina in a while, so with a little, smug smile, he straightens out his normally_ terribly _slouched posture, places his graceful fingers on the keys, and begins the clashing, colorful piece._

* * *

How is it that she continually finds herself back in her bed in the mornings? M _swears_ on her _soul_ she was in the music building, listening to the discordant pianist, last night. She has almost no recollection whatsoever of ever getting her butt off the stairs, and what little she can remember aren't concepts she likes to entertain, (although she had been entertaining similar thoughts as of late) so she dismisses them as nothing but a dream.

She frowns. Considering the coffee she drank, how did she even manage to _fall asleep_ before dawn? Now _that's_ a _real_ mystery.

It's only a moment later that her scowl falls away for a more gaping expression, and it's _not_ because she notices something stirring in Tsubaki's bed that is very much _not_ Tsu. (In all honesty, she has yet to even notice the blue nestled neatly with the white sheets.) No, it's because for _once_ she remembers something of her past life.

"Shibusen." The word falls from her lips as though it had a thousand times in the past, and in all likelihood, it did. It was a school, her alma mater, for which she has mixed feelings. Mixed feelings she can't pinpoint the source for yet.

She wants to bury her face in her pillow and scream, but she's snapped out of her thoughts when the sheets of her roommate rustle and her mattress creaks audible. "It's, like, noon-thirty. Some of us are trying to sleep, peasant."

M has no idea what Black Star is doing sleeping in Tsu's bed (Doesn't he have a dorm of his own? Why isn't he sleeping there? _What_?!), and it's not one she wants to contemplate, so she jumps out of bed and leaves.

* * *

"Hey, M?"

"Hmm?"

"Why don't you ever hang out with any of the boys in the Battalion? I mean, I can see that you're reserved and all, and that you've attached yourself to me, Tsu, and sort-of Kim and Patty, but you're ignoring a pretty big chunk of potential friends. Half your prospects, in fact."

It's not noon-thirty, as Black Star said just a half hour earlier, but almost eight in the morning, around the time when Liz craves her morning canned coffee the most.

M hesitates, a little unsure of the answer herself. To her, it just seems like common sense to stay away from boys as if they all had the plague. Eventually, she merely shrugs in reply and asks a question of her own. "Does Kid have a history with Shibusen, too?"

"That was quite the subject change. But the only answer I can give you is the usual: I don't know."

M's eyes widen in surprise. "But I thought good partners told each other their backstories. How do you trust him if you know he's keeping things from you guys?"

"Trust, M'darling," Liz easily replies. "We trust he'll tell us on his own time, whenever that may be, and that by keeping it to himself, it's not harming anyone."

"But Liz, you're his girlfriend _and_ one of his partners. With the way things go around here, I wouldn't be surprised if you've known each other for _years_. Shouldn't you know him better than anyone else, barring Kid himself?"

"Well, I do know him better than anyone else, aside from himself. He's just… terribly secretive, that's all. My guess is that he's just not ready, even after the few years the Battalion has been around. Besides," she says, "if you've picked up on the Shibusen thread, you've heard enough backstories to know none of our lives were pretty. Kid is, in all likelihoods, no different. We can't just push and pry our way into people's pasts like that, M. All that does is raise tension between people. People will talk when they're ready, and if they're never ready, well, then." Liz shrugs. "Then that's okay too."

M peers curiously at the taller blonde as she takes a long drink. "You're so mature, Liz."

Said mature girl chokes on her coffee and spits her current mouthful out over the balcony, raining cold, tainted coffee down on the disgusted NPCs below. Alarmed, M pats her back as she coughs nastily for a few seconds.

"Me, _mature_? M, I'm just a teenage girl, just like you. You don't have to act like I'm some wise, old grandma parceling out life advice," she says when she recovers her breath.

"But you just…" M struggles to find words. "You're just so _mature_. There's no other way to put it. You raised your own _sister_ , you've been living in the afterlife for _years_ ; the way you talk about things is just so… _mature_."

Liz leans over the rail, deflated. "Don't say thaaat, you're making me feel oooold. I want to feel young and pretty foreverrr."

"We _age_ here?" She's suddenly worried about all the information she'd been previously given about the age of the Battalion because Liz doesn't look a day older than eighteen.

"No, we don't, actually." Liz doesn't bother straightening herself up or standing properly. "We're teenagers… _foreverrr_. Heh, everyone's worst nightmare." She offers what's left of her coffee to M. "Want the rest?"

She takes the can, still about a quarter full, but can't seem to enjoy it when she drinks it. Too sweet, too milky. The true, proper flavor of the coffee can't come through all the milk and sugar that dilutes it. She wants it stronger. She wants to be able to taste _coffee_ , not cream.

It's then she realizes that once you get a taste of something, regardless of whether you like it or not, you'll inevitably want more.

* * *

Operation Kishin feels so _different_ with Black Star joining in. Sure, M still has her same post on the right side of the cafeteria roof, but all of a sudden, it feels _so_ much less low-key with Black Star almost jumping off the roof with a " _Yahoo!"_ every other minute. Sure, all Tsu has to do is catch his arm to keep him from doing anything _stupid_ (and eventually settles for just holding his hand all the time, like she's his mother or _something_ …), but M's temper, especially around boys, has never been slow.

It's even stranger now that she's the odd one out. She won't be in on any of the fighting, won't be able to get close to the Demon Scythe.

She sighs. After doing all those Friday operations with Tsu, not being able to fight makes her feel like nothing more than a glorified canary. Which, if she really wanted to be honest, really is true.

She listens to the girls down below her feet, tuning their guitars as the sound manager adjusts the AMP power for each of them. She surveys the ground almost lazily. It's only ever NPCs out at this point every time, but it's still her job.

They're already crowding in, ready for the concert to begin and relieve them of some of the boredom of their daily lives. M rather wishes she could scoff at their simple mindedness, but since she has yet to go on any other operation, these weekly concerts are _her_ only entertainment as well. (If only because she knows she'll see the Demon Scythe)

Well, except for the discordant pianist, but that's something she enjoys alone.

The girls begin to play their opening number, the same one every week. M tunes it out, having heard it so many times she's grown numb to the thought of Hiro recording the ridiculous lyrics. Now is when she _really_ gets down to business with her job as a lookout. It's during this song that the Demon Scythe always shows up without fail, though it's not of any particular surprise. He hears the music, he comes, just like any old NPC.

He comes from right, too, and _that's_ something that no one has any explanation for. According to Patty, it used to be random. Now, they're considering relocating the left guard and lookout to the other side if the trend continues.

The opener finishes, yet there's still no sign of him. M is equal parts baffled and nervous. From down below, Kilik squints at her, and she throws him a glare in return. _**I**_ _don't know why he isn't here yet._

The crowd down below is restless, and she can hear it. Low murmurs reach her from the ground as there's a distinctly longer pause after the final note fades away. There's something up with this week's operation, and everyone can sense it.

The sudden start of the band's signature cover rips through the air. _Resonance already?_ M thinks, knitting her brows. _They can't be ending the concert so soon; the audience isn't engaged enough to give up their lunch tickets._ Worried, M scans her area with wild fervor; where _is_ the Demon Scythe? She's starting to panic at everything about the operation going differently than planned because _dammit_ just because it's named after the god of insanity of their past lives doesn't mean it can't be controlled and planned chaos.

" _He's coming from the left!_ "

" _What?_ "

" _Yeah, pretty weird considering lately, but we don't have time to think about it now! Soul resonance!_ "

M spins around, nearly falling off the roof, to run to Tsu and resonate with her as well, but she stops dead. She has Black Star now, and he's already jumped off the roof with her in the form of a chain and scythe. Now, she can only watch as the chaos goes down.

The audience beneath her feet is getting riled up at least. She glances over at Hiro perched at the peak of the glass dome. He makes no effort to join the battle, and frankly, his lack of interest makes M want to retch. She's never seen him resonate with anyone, but deep down, she knows she doesn't care enough to find out why. She turns away with disgust and delicately treads over the glass to the other side of the roof to watch the battle.

She blinks in surprise. The Demon Scythe is bloodied already; there's a gash on his face running from the corner of his left eye and across his cheek, stopping just shy of his lips. But if that isn't strange enough (In all the Operation Kishins she's participated in, she's seen him injured from their attacks but once or twice (Or perhaps they've all healed too quickly to notice)), his normally aloof expression isn't there, either; he's frowning slightly, his brow is furrowed as he dodges the attacks of three people at once.

Back, side, together. Back, side, together. His footwork pattern is always the same, she notices, and there's a certain rhythm to it too. (Almost as if he's dancing (She'd like to dance with him.))

Her brain wants to yell at them all for not seeing the pattern of evasion so obvious to herself, a bystander, but her heart thinks they deserve to not land many, if any, hits if they can't see it for themselves. Her soul cries out, though not a sound escapes her throat.

The Demon Scythe looks up. Red eyes meet green ones for all of a second,

" _The reasons why we met don't matter; we are drawn together._ "

making M's heart skip a beat before they break gaze just as quickly. Her heart is pounding against her chest, and she tells herself she's scared. It's hard to look into eyes whose coloration is so unnatural, so typically violent, without being scared. (But she could also stare at them all day)

" _The more we hurt in the moments we touch…"_

He breaks the pattern, and the rhythm he's accomplished with the Battalion members (she frankly wonders how even Black Star fell into a rhythm of attacks, but she supposes when your attacker yells their move out two seconds before doing it, it's not that hard to adjust) falls to pieces as he pushes passed them all and makes a break for the cafeteria.

" _The clearer things become._ "

He's shockingly fast, not to mention the shock still holding the Battalion members back, and when Kid turns his wrathful gaze to M, she realizes it's up to her to stop him now, weapon or no.

She shatters the glass and the chatter beneath her feet and falls through the roof, the audience in turn falling silent. It's a terrifying few seconds in which time seems to crawl to a stop as she plunges down the dozens of meters, surrounded by glittering shards of glass that are, for some strange reason, dissipating into dust as she goes, and into the sea of NPCs below.

The girls, trained to play even when the world is ending and the sky is falling, don't even bat an eye. Kim switches out her electric guitar for an acoustic one in a heartbeat and is already strumming on it for the next song when M is caught by the NPCs.

Inner guard, inner guard. There's only one pair in charge of keeping control inside the cafeteria, and she has to find them. Who were they again? She scowls when she remembers, but if it's to participate in the fight…

(She still would rather face him herself, see those eyes again.)

"Ox!" she shouts over the music. She's fighting her way through the crowd now that she's been put down; pushing, shoving, she can't see very far because of her tiny stature, so it's _imperative_ that she makes it to where the NPCs _aren't_. " _Ox,_ you freaking _bastard_ ; where _are you?_ "

She makes it to the end of the NPC sea and sees who she's looking for gazing almost _sappily_ up at Kim on stage. Seeing red, she marches forth (how she wishes she had a book!) and slaps him right upside his shiny-ass bald head, making sure to muss his ever-so-carefully waxed hair pillars while she's at it. "OX!" she yells while he's still mid-jump, causing him to flinch again and fall on his bum rather than his feet. Harvar, in his spear form, clatters to the ground.

The crowds are parting as she speaks, making way for the very distinct white-haired, red-eyed boy they call the Demon Scythe to walk through. The rest of the Battalion is hot on his trail, crashing into the room after him but not getting the luxury of a parted sea.

Still, the band plays on.

Fortunately, M doesn't have to say anything to Ox to make him spring into action. He grabs his spear as he stumbles to his feet and sprints off to catch the Demon Scythe. M is once again just another background face.

Her brain assures her it's okay to be in the background; she hasn't a partner yet, nor is there anyone available to _be_ her partner, so it's okay that she's not out there with the rest of the Battalion, contributing to the success of the operation.

However, her heart kicks and screams and yells. It wants to plunge into the action, to face the Demon Scythe with nothing but her bare fists and _fight_ him. It so fiercely wants to be there, in front of him and be the only two people in the world, crowd and Battalion be damned.

Her soul cries out.

* * *

 _She's got to stop doing that, crying out for him with the very wavelength of her soul. It's distracting, it pulls him towards her, makes him really_ look _at her. And_ she's _distracting too, he's_ drawn _to her; his very soul longs for what it cannot have._

 _He's a little too busy now to be paying any attention to her, but he can't help himself when he hears it. The look on her face will forever be emblazoned into his brain, from her wide, green eyes that he nearly loses himself in in the split second that they meet his own, to her mouth, fallen open just a little bit to show her shock, but he breaks their gaze. (He wonders why she doesn't look at him with disgust.) He has to focus. (He wonders what it would be like to kiss those lips of hers.) He can't be staring at her now. (She's not even his type. (But the heart wants what the heart wants.)) He has stuff to be doing. Like complain about all the garbage music the Battalion plays during their insanity concerts. (Seriously, would it_ kill _them to play decent music for once? He stopped caring a long time ago about what they do, but it was_ seriously _that bad_. _)_

 _It's that split second of distraction that costs him, however. The guy with the glasses (and the_ stupidest _haircut he's ever seen in either this or his past life) catches him, trapping him with his spear shaft, and forcefully dragging him away. He curses internally. He swears if the girl had been just a distraction, he'd remind them of the reason they call him a Demon Scythe._

 _(He can't see her face; she's turned away. (He takes it as a sign of her innocence.))_

 _He still struggles against the boy and his spear, and decides it's now or never. He can sense they're going to turn the fans on and blow all the NPCs' lunch tickets into the air to gather for later soon, so he may as well say what he's been wanting to for a while now._

 _"Hey!" he yells. (He doesn't see the girl turn to face him again, surprise on her face. He doesn't realize the spear boy has stopped dragging him away for a second, nor does he realize it's the first time he's talked in front of a Battalion member in ages.)_

 _The girls ignore him. He senses the crowd growing rowdier and rowdier, so he pulls forward with all his strength. "_ Hey! _"_

 _They look at him but don't miss a beat. Even a few nearby NPCs turn to glare at him, but he doesn't care. All he wants to do is get these words off his chest._

 _"Your taste in music is trash!"_

 _That feels_ so _good to say._

 _The lead singer falters and dies off. Her bandmates look at her with concern, petering out themselves, but it's none of his concern anymore. He goes quietly._

* * *

The night is full of surprises. Never before has M seen any of the girls think anything of any happenstance, but as they say, there's a first time for everything. The hurt in Kim's face makes her look as if she's just been shot through the heart, and it pains M to see.

All the Battalion members are silent as the Demon Scythe, saying nary a word after his outburst, turns heel and walks out the door as if it is the most normal thing in the world. The crowd parts before him, whispering among themselves, just as they had when he entered, and no one makes an effort to stop him, not even Ox, who allows him to slip away. Everyone watches him go. Even in the silence, they can't hear sounds of battle once he leaves. It's as if for just a moment, he's not a threat, he's not their enemy, he's just a regular boy.

M eyes the stage, still uncharacteristically silent. Kim looks like she's truly about to cry. It's more than the _almost-tears_ she had when talking about her life; there's one rolling down a cheek already. Her heart breaks for the other girl, even if they don't know each other as well as others.

But the girl with the bubblegum hair and tears in her eyes takes the mic into her own hands. She faces the audience _clearly_ holding back tears and holds the mic up to her lips, her expression twisted from one of hurt shock into one of angry vengeance. "I don't want to sing covers anymore," she says, her voice warbled and unsteady. "I know you all love them, but it's time that we move on and make something of ourselves." She sniffles, rather ruining the angry look she has going on, but the audience doesn't appear to care.

They're murmuring amongst themselves now. M can't make out any of it until a random NPC in the crowd, a short girl with long, black hair jumps up and down, cupping her hands around her mouth like a megaphone and yelling, " _WE LOVE YOU, KIMMIE!_ " Nevermind the fact that _no one_ has ever called Kim, _Kimmie_ , in the history of _ever_ ; the one girl's bravery (It's rather unusual for an NPC to act so independently of the crowd, but there are always exceptions, M supposes.) sparks a few whoops and " _yeah!_ "s from others, which grows into full-blown applause and cheering.

Having recovered her composure, Kim's expression is now unreadable. She shares a look with Meme, their drummer, who, after shaking her head to clear mind of its dreamy thoughts, bites her lip in concern.

But whatever look Kim shoots her must be more concerning because she starts to play that song M heard them practice the night before. The crowd falls silent.

Kim takes a breath, just loud enough to be picked up by the microphone she holds just centimeters away from her lips, and begins to sing.

" _Raining and raining— it could be a happy thing for you."_

The performance is far from brilliant. It teeters just on the edge between _good_ and _so-so_.

" _Raindrops of wishes,"_

It's easy to tell that no one is used to Kim singing something of this genre,

" _for you, my dear, so look up"_

or how her voice sounds this time around,

" _in the sky."_

or how despite the unpolished performance, it's clear to see her soul is bared to everyone present with just this one piece.

" _See, you'll find your star signs."_

There's something different about her when she's singing this song. Not just her demeanor, or her voice, or even the way she's acting.

" _See how much your life shines."_

No, it's far more obvious than all those things. So obvious M can see it happen right before her eyes.

" _So close your umbrella."_

She's letting off a faint _glow_ , her normally chin-length hair is now creeping passed her shoulders, and M _swears_ her headband is growing cat ears.

" _See, a love letter from the heavens."_

The audience sways back and forth to the beat; out of the corner of her eye, M catches Ox weaving his way out of the crowd with Harvar towards the fans.

" _Millions of bell rings,"_

Kim's still glowing, her hair's still growing, and the cat ears turn out to be tanuki ears.

" _The sound of the bell rings for you, dreamer._ "

She's _resonating_ , all on her own, M realizes. She hadn't realized before because it's unheard of to do it without a partner.

" _Sometimes we forget the precious thing"_

The fans quietly switch on, and NPC lunch tickets begin to drift through the air. It's not wild and chaotic like it usually is, but they're still given up.

" _which we have lost."_

Kim's smiling. If not with her mouth, then with her eyes.

" _Rain for you."_

Her guitar hits the floor at the same time as her final tear. Jackie lunges forward to catch the mic before hit hits the ground. M can hardly believe the events that have just transpired before her eyes.

Kim has been obliterated.

* * *

It's hard to remember how the rest of the night went. There's the audience's uproar at the sudden vanishing of their favorite band's lead singer and the subsequent struggle to keep them from lashing out against the rest of the Battalion. There's the silently peeved Kid unleashing his full abilities on all the NPCs, threatening to destroy them all using Liz and Patty. There's the stoic Harar and Jackie keeping a _bawling_ Ox company as they return to headquarters and the not-so-dramatic reveal that he had been head-over-heels in _love_ with the former witch. (Literally everyone who had been around him for more than two seconds could have figured it out.)

M wakes up hunched over the coffee table in the middle of Anti-Demon Scythe Headquarters. Still drowsy, she looks about to see Black Star passed out (and snoring like _heeell_ ) on Kid's desk, Patty doodling on his face, Jackie staring into space with dark circles under her eyes from the corner, and everyone else still fast asleep in various positions and locations of the room. (Well, everyone but Kid and Liz, both of whom are nowhere in sight)

Actually, scratch that last bit. M hears the doorknob turn and turns to see Liz walk into the room, looking a little more disheveled than usual, but then again, M supposes, they're _all_ a little more out of it than usual. She doesn't have to be nagged for it.

"Patty," she says, very slowly. "What have I told you about drawing on people?"

Patty somewhat reluctantly caps her marker and assumes a guilty, dog-eyed look directed at her sister. "I need to ask permission before doing anything, and if they say no, they mean no, and if they're sleeping, no matter how funny it would be, they cannot give consent and I'm not allowed to draw," she recites.

"Good girl. Now wash off Black Star's face and apologize when he wakes up."

Patty obediently leaves the room to acquire a wet rag, leaving Liz and M the only conscious beings in the room (Jackie's state of mind is questionable considering she hasn't blinked or twitched or even moved at all in the last few minutes, and M suspects she's been like this for hours). The older Thompson gives M a weary smile and sits down on the floor by the coffee table. "How are ya, M'darling?"

M shrugs and rests her chin on her palm. "Fine, I guess. Seeing obliteration first hand last night is still a pretty surreal feeling. Seeing her resonate on her own was also pretty weird. Did you guys know that was possible?"

"Well, yes. Actually, no. Sort of. They were a special case who also happens to have been obliterated a long time ago."

"A special case?"

"Well, you have to see, Crona resonated by themself, and an ugly, black weapon named Ragnarök would burst out of their back and transform into a sword. Meister and weapon possessed the same body, and it was just as terribly gritty and nasty as it sounds. They had some real issues, but in the end they were obliterated. It wasn't neat and clean like how Kim was obliterated, either. We don't see obliterations often, but Kim's was definitely the cleanest I've ever seen. I'd even say she looked happy to be obliterated."

"…So Kim was just a special case all around, huh?"

"It really seems so."

M breaks eye contact with Liz, choosing instead to stare at the wood grain of the coffee table. She takes a glance up at Ox's snoring face just a meter or so away and notices the dried salt is still crusted on his cheeks from last night. As much as she hates the guy, she feels a little bad for him. To have loved and to have lost, what a terrible, terrible thing to experience in a place where people are supposed to last forever with care.

"Liz, why do we fall in love?"

Liz shoots her a confused look. " _Why do we fall in love?_ "

"Here, I mean. I get why it happens in the real life, but here… here, we're _dead_. There's really no point to falling in love here, especially if there's always the looming threat of being obliterated hanging over our heads."

"Why do we fall in love in the real life, then? Especially in a world that is filled with dangerous witches looming around every corner and kishins to be fighting."

"…To find a suitable mate to reproduce with."

"Honestly, M, that's the most utilitarian explanation of love I've ever heard in this life or previous."

"Well, what's wrong with it?"

"M, haven't you ever fallen in love?"

"No!" (Yes.) "All men are obnoxious pigs, but a species still needs to survive. Love just makes them more bearable."

Liz laughs. "Is _that_ why you avoid all the boys in the Battalion like the plague?"

M pauses. The line had simply fallen out of her mouth without her giving it all that much thought, but thinking about it more closely makes other memories stir in the back of her mind. Unfortunately, the details are still locked up tight in the back of her mind until she resonates with someone. "I suppose."

"Still, maybe you were a lesbian? No one here cares if you were or not; not everyone here is straight."

M gives it some thought. "Love in general seems kind of futile. It's not really something I'd like to subject myself to. But you…?"

"Romantic relationships aren't a necessity to me. Like I told you before, I'd choose Patty over Kid any day of the week. But they're nice to have. Your partner— in the romantic sense, not the resonance sense— can be a good source of stability, trust, and comfort. Of course, this all isn't to say that there's anything wrong with the relationship you forge with your partner, the one you resonate with. Those are important too. But it's nice to be able to kiss your best friend sometimes."

She shrugs. "A pretty crap explanation, I know. Your heart does all the talking at first, and it makes everything that has to do with who it wants sound like a good idea. But even when all the nonsensical heart-flutters and eye-making is over, and the feeling of _love_ fades away, it's the choice to continue on together that makes it all worthwhile. It's just—" Words are failing her. "Becoming a _thing_ here in this afterlife is kind of similar to getting married in the real life: you promise you'll support one another no matter what, and that while you don't really _complete_ one another because _that_ idea's _stupid_ , it's important that you cover for one another's flaws and bring what you already excel at to even greater heights."

M blinks. All this sounds familiar, just in a different context. "That sounds like partnership."

"Partners do have a higher chance of ending up in a romantic relationship than with an NPC or someone outside their partnership, yes."

She shakes her head. "No, that reminds me of that soul resonance of your lives gone by. With soul wavelengths and the purpose of the weapon being equivalent to that of a guitar AMP and the whole 'bringing each other to even greater heights than what you could have achieved alone'."

"Well, romances aren't really an _upgrade_ to a partnership or friendship. It's just… an added label, really. Relationships _should_ be able to function like a regular friendship most of the time. If you're not friends, then… what's the point?"

M had never thought of it that way.

* * *

She's shocked when she returns to her dorm.

 _He figures that, hey, if they're throwing one of those insanity-inducing concerts, he might as well take advantage of the fact that a) all the dorms will be empty and b) he'll be able to restock on his own lunch tickets once all of that stupid Battalion has sifted through for what they want._

All she wanted was to crash on her bed and spend a few hours staring at the ceiling, alone with her thoughts to properly digest the conversation she had with Liz, maybe put the few lunch tickets she bothered to pick up the night prior in with her leftovers.

 _She seems to like the coffee he's been subtly giving her as of late, which is nice. He doubts there's anyone else in the afterlife that likes their coffee quite so dark and bitter (just like him on the inside), so might as well give her a little bit of that sort of joy in her life, right? Especially since he has so many black coffee tickets stashed away because no one likes it and therefore, its tickets are very common among the Battalion's leftovers._

But what she sees when she opens the door is so much more.

 _He slips into the room she shares with that one tall girl, just as he does with the practice rooms on the nights she comes to listen to him play, right as the concert begins in the cafeteria. For a moment, he pauses and simply admires the distinct cleanliness of the room, so different from the pig sty he crashes in a building over, then digs his hand into his pants pocket, fishing out all the lunch tickets he brought with him and dumping them on her pillow. They're not all for the black coffee they both seem to enjoy so much, either_ — _there are a few in there for ramen, pizza, rice and vegetable bowls, whatever._

Why is her pillow _covered_ in _dozens_ upon _dozens_ of lunch tickets?

 _The last one is, to be expected, one for coffee, and it's here that he hesitates._

She picks up one. _Coffee, black. ¥350._

Another. _Coffee, black. ¥350._

 **Another.** _Coffee, black. ¥350._

 _Not wanting to linger, lest one of the girls come back for something and find him, he makes up his mind swiftly and leaves the ticket with the rest. (Though this one is folded neatly, unlike the rest.)_

There's one on the very top of the pile that she's rather afraid to touch. It's folded into the shape of a heart, and it lies separate from all the others. Her hands shaking, she gingerly takes it and unfolds it.

 _Coffee, black. ¥350._

She feels sick.

Why, why, why?

(She knows why.)

 _Who?_

(She knows who.)

There's a tiny arrow in the corner of the ticket, and it's just as they always say: curiosity kills the cat.

 _Cafeteria for coffee at 8:00 Sunday?_

* * *

 ** _author's note ii._** s _ooo I was going to be like, "*CRASHES THROUGH WALL, THE OTHER SIDE OF WHICH IS VERY CLEARLY ON FIRE* WHAT'S UP SOUL EATER FANDOM I'M HERE TO KICK ASS AND WRITE FANTASY AUS, AND I'M ALL OUT OF ASSES TO KICK" buuuut I'm not cool enough to be able to kick ass. Aaaaand this is an angel beats au. Sort of._

 _also I was actually going to name the band present in this fic lunar resonance, but then i found out that's the name of a popular fic writer in the fandom, and since I'm too shy to address them or even think of naming the band the same name as a popular fic writer because SHY (even though it was just a coincidence), I just ended up not giving the band a name bc I couldn't think of any that I liked and were catchy. So, lunar resonance, if you're reading this (unlikely but still), hi. I almost named the band after you on accident. Also I love your tumblr blog. Ye._


	3. but neither have i the wings to fly

**Word Count:** 9,533

* * *

No matter what M plans on doing later, there's a bigger problem looming over the heads of the Battalion as a whole:

 _Without Kim as lead vocalist, how will the band perform in order to properly execute Operation Kishin?_

 _No one_ is hot on the idea of finding a new singer, but in the end, it's necessary.

"Now, all we have to do is find out _how_ to find this new vocalist," Kid muses.

Patty gasps and bounces wildly up and down on the couch. "We can throw a karaoke party in the cafeteria! The girls can play the instrumentals, and whoever can sing all their songs best can be the new lead!"

"What if they're an NPC?"

Patty shrugs. "We can screen who we let sing up there. If someone acts too much like an NPC, we'll whack 'em."

"Patty, you know we're not allowed to be violent against NPCs," Liz chides, but her sister merely shrugs. "Besides, you can't kill NPCs. It's not the way things work around here."

"Regardless," Kid says, "That _should_ still work. We'll schedule it for tomorrow at eight in the evening. I understand that it's rather short notice, but this _does_ have to be done ASAP. Any objections?"

(M has one, but it's selfish and she doesn't want to talk about it.)

There are none.

"Very well. Battalion dismissed."

* * *

It's shocking how many students in school they thought were NPCs are actually reincarnated souls. (Most don't care to join the Battalion, however, so they may as well be soulless) So many unfamiliar faces show up to karaoke night, and while most don't pass the test set up to catch NPCs, it's still startling how many _do_.

To think there had been people with souls walking among them, living their regular, everyday school lives without them realizing it…

For example, there's the girl from the Friday prior with the long, black hair, although now her hair is chopped short like Kim's. _She_ passes. She introduces herself as Tsugumi, and to say that Jackie in particular dislikes her isn't a lie.

M's more concerned about how quickly she seems to shift personalities around and how similar she's made her personality to how Kim used to be. Something tells her that if it had been she this Tsugumi had latched onto, she'd be parading around in pigtails and trying to resonate with her.

But the kid knows the songs, that much is true. She knows them _unnervingly_ well. _And_ she _can_ sing.

M watches her sing her heart out as she herself sits at a table in the back, her head propped up by her elbow and overall feeling a little empty. She's _supposed_ to be keeping an eye on the audience to see if they react similarly to how they did Kim's singing with the new whoever's, but she has no idea what she's looking for. All she ever did during the concerts was stand on the roof. Sure, she _felt_ their energy levels— sort of— but _actively looking_ for a reaction? Nope, not her department.

She listlessly glances around the room. There's nothing of note.

Except, of course, for the shock of tousled, white hair bobbing through the crowd towards the registers. (A pang of guilt wracks through her because _dammit_ he _asked her_ to _coffee_ at _this specific time._ )

 _Ox_. She snaps to attention, knowing he's indoors with her— he _always_ takes the role of interior guard. If he sees the Demon Scythe, she _knows_ he'll attack him without hesitation, but something about the scythe's bowed head and low key attitude tells M he's not here to call them out on their musical tastes again.

Filled with a new energy, she scans the crowd for her rival. He's not hard to find, considering his ridiculous and outstanding haircut; it's getting his attention before he directs it at the scythe that's the problem. Right now, his focus is on the band up on stage. With a little luck, it'll stay there.

Somehow, she loses the Demon Scythe in the crowd. She's equal parts relieved and worried that she can't see him anymore. After all, how does one hide white hair in a mosaic of browns, blacks, and every shade and hue of the rainbow _except_ for white?

She yelps at an embarrassingly loud level when she feels the gentle _tap-tap-tap_ on her shoulder. She twirls around on a jolt of fear and finds herself staring straight into the ruby red eyes of the Demon Scythe.

Time stands still.

Her heart beats fast; memories of a life long passed beg to surface in the back of her mind, colors and promises fleeting, flying so quickly she cannot even begin to hope to catch them. What little resolve she had falls away when she sees him, really _looks_ him in the eye. How _can_ she hold onto it, when they're staring so intently at her? They say the eyes are the windows into the soul, but her soul is feeling much too shy and barren when he stares at her like that. _How_ can she be brave, _how_ can she l—

She's back to cutting off her thoughts.

He blinks at her, says nothing.

She's not sure what will happen if she's found. After all, the Demon Scythe is their one and only target, a hostile entity in a sea of nonentities. If she's drinking _coffee_ with him, not even _trying_ to get a hit in on him (Or perhaps she will, if she feels like talking), in a place where they actively search to restrain him, what will they say? Will she have to explain herself, force herself to show even herself how she feels?

His hand reaches out and takes her own (it feels like she's been shot through the heart with lightning), and unnoticed, he pulls them through the sea of people.

* * *

Her heart is racing, the beat of it hardly more than a buzz in her chest; thinking about it too, the buzz fills her brain, choking out her thoughts and all rationale. She wishes she could swallow all these feelings building up in her throat. The ones that make her want to laugh and cry at the same time, the ones that make her want to pull him close and tell him how much she l—

 _How did I ever get into this mess?_

Hall. A mess hall. Their hands are no longer entwined, and they're in a mess hall. Right next to where the girls' concert is taking place.

It's empty, save for themselves. The hand he held tingles as if it had been asleep; her rational thoughts return with a crash. They choke her as she remembers. Oh, how can she live?

He's not staring at her, or even in her direction. He's focused on the lonely serving machines lined up against the wall, feeding it a ticket for something she's _positive_ is coffee, and she's simply standing there, gaping, staring at him.

He picks up the white cup the machine presents him with and looks at her. (God, would her heart just _stop_ leaping up to her throat?) He scoots away from the machine, still stealing glances at her, and waits expectantly.

Remembering (embarrassingly late) why she's here, M shuffles over to the serving machine and feeds it her own coffee ticket, which it fortunately takes despite its crinkles and scribbles. She grabs the cup it gives to her in return and pivots to face the Demon Scythe.

He's standing again, and he offers her his free hand.

She's hesitant to take it, just for a second.

"I promise I'm not going to hurt you."

But when she does, it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

* * *

She doesn't look back when they leave the cafeteria. She's not even listening to Tsugumi still singing inside. Instead, she's focused. On the warmth of his hand, on the familiar route they're taking, on the strange lightness that fills her heart (despite memories trying to claw their way up to her consciousness).

She doesn't ask why the music building is unlocked; neither of them say anything at all. He simply leads her inside, and together, they tiptoe through the halls.

She holds her breath. How could she have missed it?

Their hands drop down to their sides. The Demon Scythe opens up the practice room door and gestures for her to enter. She obeys. He follows. The door is shut behind them both.

It's a terribly small room. With the grand piano taking up most of the room, there's hardly enough space for the two of them to be even an arm's distance away. The Demon Scythe puts his coffee down on the floor (since coffee in a piano would be a bitch to clean out) and pulls the bench out just a few centimeters and slides onto it, lifting the lid and uncovering the keys as he does so. M settles onto the bench beside him, careful not to touch him.

"This is the kind of person I am," he says, and he begins to play.

It's the piece that first drew M to the music building, and hearing it again all these weeks later is just as breathtaking and heart-pounding as the first time.

He's still playing when she decides to take a chance and lean against him, closing her eyes to let the music wash over her.

It's in that moment that she swears she can feel the hole in her soul being filled and satisfied. Something about it just _completes_ her, makes her feel like—

The first memory hits her like a sour note, and all the breath is knocked out of her.

 _Maka._

 _Maka, Maka, Maka, Maka Maka Maka Maka Maka Maka Makamakamakamakamaka MAKA. Maka Albarn._

Her name.

An integral part of her identity, stolen away from her for so long, come flying back to her with the grace of an angry goose. Yet she has no time to process anything; a wall she forgot had existed has come crashing down around her memories, opening a floodgate.

Everything, _everything_ , is coming back all at once, in the span of half a second, maybe two. It's impossible to keep track of anything at all in the chaos.

She wants to open her eyes before it's over, but since _everything_ hit her like a pile of bricks all at once, that's impossible. She's in shock, and when her eyes _do_ finally shoot open, all she can see is white.

Then, all the world fades to black.

* * *

 _Her dreams are tempestuous and wild, filled with bright, angry shades of red. From the dark crimson of blood glistening in the moonlight to the fading reddish-orange of cheap hair dye, red dominates her dreams._

 _Change._

 _It must have happened all the time in her previous life. Women changing every day depending on her father's whims, changing partners because_ **no one ever felt right** _, changing classes, changing teachers. The only thing that seemed to be immune to change was the school she attended._

Shibusen.

 _The one thread that connected the backstories of the Battalion members was part of her life's tapestry, too. Her one and only constant lined up with the one and only constant across stories._

 _It felt like the school was constantly mocking her._ You'll never be as good as her, you'll never be as good as her, you'll never be as good as her, you'll never be as good as her, you'll never be as good as her…

 _She'd never be as good as her Mama._

 _She set her expectations so, so high. To create a death scythe, just as Mama had, and become a brilliant meister working under Shinigami-sama. But as partner after partner came and went, she could feel herself crumbling. She could feel her resolve chipping away, flake by flake, piece by piece, chunk by chunk, until graduation day arrived, and she had no partner. Just a piece of paper and a bucket load of tears._

 _Because she tried. She tried so,_ so _hard to be just as good as Mama had been when she was her age. Yet what had she done instead? Gone through five different partners in the span of two years, running three of them ragged with her aspirations and the other two insane with her standards. Never had a chance to even_ try _to get out of the NOT class._

You'll never be as good as her, you'll never be as good as her, you'll never be as good as her…

 _As salty tears flowed from her eyes like a river down her cheeks, she wondered if she takes after her Papa. He always told her, "Variety is the spice of life!" And truly, the number of different weapons she's worked with in her time is a Shibusen record._

 _But his habits made her distrustful. Not just of men, but also of weapon/meister partnerships. She saw her parents fight. She saw them get divorced. She saw how they once were._

 _She saw how they ended up._

Trust leads to hurt, loyalty leads to lies, especially with boys, and she's just better off alone and partnerless.

 _Such is the mantra she tells herself every day the summer after her final year as she lies in bed, the late afternoon sun streaming into her bedroom and onto her face. She doesn't need anyone. She is her own better half. To be partnerless can lead to greatness. It's happened before._

 _There's a hole in her soul that she's had for as long as she can remember; she's long since learned to ignore it, yet something about her situation sets it yearning to be fulfilled._

 _Trust leads to hurt, loyalty leads to lies, she's better off alone and partnerless._

 _Telling herself the same thing didn't work when she attended Shibusen, even when she believed it wholeheartedly. After she graduated, she chants it like a prayer, but belief is beyond her._

* * *

 _All she wants is to be someone's angel. To be perfect just to them, even if she isn't in reality._

 _She met her first partner at one of those mingling games. He was sweet and kind and respectful, but the resentment within his heart grew to be too much when she pushed the both of them to the very ends of their limits and he just couldn't take it anymore. He grew hot and heavy in her hands, never to resonate with her again._

 _Her second partner was a girl, energetic and a hopeless romantic and with endless awe-filled respect for her. She wanted so badly to please her meister, to create something powerful together, but when she missed her mark one too many times, the tearful promises to do better next time were met with nothing but the harsh, spitting, chiding words of the pigtailed meister. Respect turned to fear, and she could no longer transform._

 _Number three was a girl as well. She was aloof with a side of sass, and nothing would ever remove her from the firm grip she had on reality. By all means, with their determination and passion equally matched, it should have worked out. But the brightest fires die the fastest, and they squabbled over whether or not they should try out for the EAT class. It put a damper on their relationship, and it surprised no one when it fizzled into nothing just a few days later._

 _She told herself not all men were like her Papa, that she could trust a boy to be a proper partner, nevermind the fact she had tried that already, so that's what she did for the fourth. He was smart, very much so, but lacked common sense; to put it concisely, he was an intelligent idiot. But they teamed up just fine (nevermind the fact that she could no longer pull off Witch Hunter), so she saw no reason to change. She thought they could go far together, that perhaps they could become death scythe and top notch meister. But he ran just days before an exam, never to be seen again. A single letter explained his reasoning: she expected too much out of him._

 _Shinigami-sama clicked his tongue at her when she showed up with her head hung to request yet another partner. He threatened her with expulsion,_ this _many partner divorces in_ this _short span of time was simply unacceptable, and she's to take remedial classes until December, and a whole other load of crap that she just couldn't find inside herself to pay attention to._

 _Very few people at Shibusen mess up so many times so as to get to their fifth chance alive, but she is still her father's daughter: to just_ say _his name gets her through anything she so desires. Her fifth and, as it turned out,_ final _partner had no gender, preferring the nonbinary label. Though tranquil as a forest on the outside, just one resonance revealed that there was a tempest brewing within them. But she's ceased to care; she_ made _their wavelengths match, though their resonance is weak. She took her apathy and ran with it, pushing and grinding towards her (_ their. _) goal. Every day was a new extracurricular assignment, until they had collected ninety-nine souls together. Success was just within their grasp; she could practically taste it._

 _Betrayal stings the hardest when the victim doesn't expect it: they said no, they'd rather_ die _than take on a witch, than to continue being her partner because it was all_ too **damn** much _._

 _Her heart was shattered, never to be repaired again._

 _All she wanted was to be someone's angel, to be perfect just to them, even if she wasn't in reality. But all she ended up with was her flaws shining through the holes in her soul, never to be filled, fixed, or free._

* * *

 _She wishes for wings to travel swiftly, over fields of green and skies of blue. She wants her wings to lift her higher, to ride above the clouds so high, and to bring her home again. She shall fly through the night, just like she's always dreamed, through winter's storm and summer's light, flying higher until she's by her crossroads._

 _The wings she's given are cute and fluffy, exactly the ones that are expected of an angel. They're hardly proper for what she longs to do with them, but her vanity gets the better of her._

 _She sees the birds flying south every autumn and envies them. She could never make the trip with only the puny, nearly downy feathers of her little angel wings. But they're cute. And that makes_ her _cute. She's an angel, a cute, little angel. She shall live even if she cannot fly._

 _Her soul stirs, and she can feel it brushing up against her heart in her chest. It's restless; it knows, it knows. It knows of her dissatisfaction. She's far too proud or stubborn to even_ consider _admitting it, but even wings do not fill the holes in her soul and now her heart that have been empty for far too long._

* * *

Her conscience creeps upon her slowly, waking her up gently, gradually, until she barely realizes she's woken up when her eyes open up a crack and see through blurry lenses a pair of dark, ocean blue eyes.

"M?" the owner of the kindest, most gentle person she's ever known asks with concern. "Are you okay? You had a bit of a rough night. And morning, really. It's half past one in the afternoon. You were sleeping like the dead; we feared you were gone, transformed into an NPC like the legends of long ago."

"M?" Just the initial _M_ no longer feels complete to her. Frowning, she sits up in bed and blinks a few times.

Tsubaki purses her lips and stares at her roommate. "Please don't have become an NPC," she whispers, "You're important to us with or without a partner."

"Maka."

"What?" The taller girl's jaw falls and her eyes widen slightly with shock.

"I remember my name," she says bluntly. The memories of the night before, of the _life_ before, crowd her brain; it's difficult to process and order. "I'm Maka. Maka Albarn."

"Your _full_ name?"

"Yes."

"But then—" Tsubaki stops short as it dawns on her.

Maka doesn't mean to cry, but the tears come out anyway.

"You resonated."

They're silent, streaking down her ruddy cheeks and falling to her lap, dampening her uniform skirt in the process.

"With whom?"

White hair, red eyes, shark teeth. Tall, tanned, tired. The Demon Scythe, the discordant pianist, the one who made her soul feel whole. For the first time, for the thousandth time, again.

Crying even silent tears makes noses clog with snot, and Maka sniffles audibly to clear her sinuses, but all that does is allow a pitiful, little mewling of a noise escape, which in turn allows the floodgates to open. Slowly, she hunches down lower and lower, Tsu watching with terrified concern, until her back hurts and her face is buried in her hands as they rest on her legs, sobs wracking throughout her entire body.

"It's okay if you don't want to say—"

She cuts herself off when Maka abruptly looks up and at her, bloodshot eyes, boogers running down from her nose, her mouth wide open as she babbles, and entire face red with neither embarrassment nor anger. Tsu's expression hardens as some maternal instinct kicks in inside her. " _Maka._ Who is it?"

The incoherent mumbling that spews from her mouth don't give any clue. She doesn't want to say, because to say it out loud would make it all the more real in some strange way. She doesn't want to believe it, doesn't want anyone to know who her partner is in this world, out of fear of their rejection. For her other half to be their enemy— why, it was a regular Romeo and Juliet scenario. The _exact_ thing Kid told her could never happen. She can't live with that; they're family now, the family she chose and is so much better than the one she had in life.

Yet she knows who she resonated with. Even if she doesn't want to believe it, to bend reality to make it so that it never happened, at least not with him, once the truly impossible options have been eliminated, the one and only option left for her rational brain to grasp, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Even if she doesn't want it to be. (Even if she also really, truly _does_.)

"I can't tell youuuu."

" _Who is it, Maka?_ "

She sniffles, though it doesn't help her situation all that much. "Can I whisper it in your ear," she whimpers, hoping that Tsu will say no, that she'll be able to pretend none of this is real, that it's all just another one of her fever dreams.

Wordlessly, the older girl nods and leans in to listen.

It's the point of no return, but Mama didn't raise a coward. Maka forces herself to calm down, to compose herself, and after taking a deep breath, leans over to Tsubaki's ear and whispers her partner's label (His name, his name; does she _know_ his name?) into her ear.

Tsu doesn't jerk away in disgust or fear or whatever it is that Maka was expecting. She leans away and faces the other girl yet again. "Maka, it's okay."

"Don't feed me that crap," Maka snaps. "You know it's a lie."

"But it's _not_ a lie! It's o—"

" _No,_ it's _not._ Tsu, this isn't some fictional story with a happy ending where it's okay and sometimes even _expected_ for people on opposite sides to fall in love without any consequences, okay? He's the _Demon Scythe_. We're the _Anti-Demon Scythe Battalion_. Does it _matter_ that because I resonated with him, I got my life story back, and now we're to be partners or some hunk of utter _crap_ like that?" Her voice is shrill and raised; if there's anyone outside their door, they can surely hear her now, screaming and crying about her resonance with their enemy. She's ceased caring though; the words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup. They can know. They _will_ know.

"Tsu, _please_. Don't tell me it's okay when it's not. It's not. It's not." Her tears have soaked through her skirt now; she can feel the damp cloth clinging to her thigh.

The door slams open. The second she looks up, something stings her cheek, and there's an audible _smack!_ She's met with blue eyes, blurred from her tears, but they're not Tsu's. They're too light a shade, too hard around the edges to be Tsu's.

"Maka No-Middle-Name Albarn, e _nough_ of this _bullshit_." Liz's stern voice cuts her more than any knife ever could. "You resonated with the Demon Scythe, and everyone knows it. You own up to that fact _right now_ , or so help me."

"How—"

Another stinging slap, and a fire in the girl's eyes that she's only ever seen in Patty's before. "We are neither _blind_ _ **nor**_ _deaf_ here in purgatory."

Maka doesn't want to talk. So she bawls, she falls over, she buries her face in her pillow and cries and cries and cries. She barely hears Tsu chiding Liz for being so forceful with her interrogation; she doesn't come up for breath when her nose clogs and the pillow and mattress can offer her no more oxygen. She simply lets her screams fade into silence.

* * *

The infirmary is silent. Her eyes open slowly, adjusting just as slowly to the bright afternoon light streaming into the room, made infinitely brighter by the white walls and enormous mirror. She almost doesn't notice him sitting at the end of her bed, fiddling with the hem of the curtain designed to separate them from the rest of the world, but then again, it's impossible to miss someone so dark in a room so full of light.

She's not scared because he surprised her with his presence. No, he surprises her because he's the one in power, he's the one with the thing against the Demon Scythe, and _what_ is he doing visiting her alone? She sits up in bed, her movement alerting him of her consciousness.

"Ah. Miss Albarn. You're awake."

"No, I just like to sleep with my eyes wide open while sitting up."

"Funny; I could have sworn sass was Liz's thing. She must have rubbed off on you."

"There's no need to be so cold, Kid."

"Cold? You wound me, Miss Albarn; I am merely being formal. I apologize; it's simply an old habit that carried over from life. I had to compensate for my father's frequent informality somehow."

Maka says nothing for a second. Something tells her he's about to unload his backstory on her, but the rest of her says that's ridiculous because he hasn't even told Liz and/or Patty about it yet, and what could possibly make _her_ that much more special? (Aside from the fact that she resonated with the Demon Scythe the night before, and they're supposed to be partners, and Kid has some beef with the scythe.)

"We the Battalion generally wouldn't do this, but…" Kid trails off and sighs. "Due to the circumstances, we're willing to hear the case out."

"I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about," Maka cuts in, growing irritated.

The door opens, and Liz pops her head in and says, "You're getting married."

" _What?_ "

"Ignore her," Jackie's disembodied voice grumbles, "We're not sure about that yet."

" _WHAT?_ " Maka's just about ready to jump out of bed, kick Kid in the face on her way out, and let everyone out there have an earful of what she has to say.

"We're going to let him into HQ on neutral ground," Kid snaps, facing the Battalion members crowding the infirmary door. "So that we can have a discussion about what's going on here once and for all." She's sure she hears him mumble something else under his breath, but she can't be sure as to what it is.

She remains silent, but Kid ceases his mumbling and gets up off the edge of her bed. "You have twenty-four hours to find and bring him to HQ. After that, he will be assumed hostile, and partner or not, we can't have you associating with him. You'll be reassigned to a different part of the Battalion should this happen." He turns and gives all the heads crowding the doorway a pointed look. "You can all come in now; she hasn't died of shock," he says.

Patty's the first to enter, a face-splitting grin accompanying a childish squeal as she leaps into the room and makes it to Maka's bedside in just a few bounds. Maka yelps out of surprise and very nearly misses Liz behind the rest of the crowd casually bending down to kiss Kid lightly on the cheek before he exits and the faint smile he gives her in return.

She forgets about it nearly the second she notices it because the attention has been off Black Star for far too long and his cannonball onto the foot of her bed is a testament to that. Quite literally bounced out of bed, Maka grabs onto the also bounced-out and giggling Patty as they crash back onto the mattress.

" _Black Star!_ " Tsubaki chides. He gives her a cheeky grin but reins in his bouncing.

"So, my most stubborn, tiny subject," he says to Maka, "How was the Demon Scythe? Would you say he could _almost_ compare to the great me?"

"Yeah, M!" Patty cries, "It's imperative that you tell us all about him!"

Maka looks at her teammates with a curious concern. "Are you guys saying that you've been fighting him all this time knowing little to nothing about him?"

The excited atmosphere seems to die instantly. All is silent. Maka glances uneasily from Patty to Tsubaki to Black Star to Liz, whom she can tell is biting the inside of her lip.

"We… were just kinda swept up with Kid at the time, to be honest," she says. "A lot was happening at the time, with the return of our memories and the unfamiliarity of this place. And when you find out you can transform into a gun, well, the most thing to do when combined with all the adrenaline of that first transformation is to fight with it. The question of why didn't occur to us until long after the conflict between us and the Demon Scythe had been established. By then it was too late to question who he was, and the assumption had always been that everyone has their reasons."

There's a distinct pause that even Black Star manages to participate in.

Because if _everyone's_ decision to join the Battalion was anything like her own, with the whole ' _join us because we are the only sentient beings and therefore your only option_ ' gig, then the morality of having it suddenly became a lot darker. Plus, ever since the karaoke night and the discovery that there are a great number of people among the NPCs, it's no longer _join the Battalion or be obliterated_. Besides…

"…He carried you back last night."

She's shocked out of her thoughts. "What?" she asks, because she's genuinely unsure about what Tsubaki is talking about.

"Your partner, the Demon Scythe. He carried you back from who _knows_ where last night."

Oh. Right. The practice room, and the music, and the resonance.

"How do you know this?" she asks, quietly because she's really not sure where this conversation is going, nor does she know if she likes where it's headed. Because even she hadn't known until she'd been told just now.

Tsu shoots a glance over at Liz, and they briefly share a look, after which they simultaneously stare down at Black Star. The blue-haired boy smiles innocently up at Tsubaki specifically, but just as he opens his big mouth, Liz clamps her hand over it in an attempt to muffle him.

" _Attempt"_ because nothing in life _or_ purgatory can possibly mute Black Star, who came into the world with a megaphone attached to his vocal chords, practically, but it does still at least make what he's trying to say indignant and incoherent. For some reason, Tsu's cheeks burn red, but she remains composed for Liz's sake, who's already making a distressed face because of Black Star's attempt to get her hand off his mouth via licking.

"We were walking back late at night, a little bit after karaoke ended because we were off doing stuff."

Maka can see the scene now: the Demon Scythe holding her in his arms, moonbeams making his hair glow softly white in the dark, standing before the door to her dorm and trying to open it. Liz and Tsubaki turn the corner into their hall, see him, and—

Black Star manages to get one of Liz's fingers between his teeth and bites down. She yelps, and Maka flinches, finally paying attention to the scene playing out before her.

"I'm—" Black Star begins, but Liz yanks him by the collar and flings him clean through the wall of the infirmary, effectively silencing him.

"Keep your damn commentary out of this; it's unnecessary to the story!" she yells at his bleeding body and turns back to face Maka, dusting her hands off. "That should keep him out of it for the next twenty minutes." She nods at Tsubaki to continue talking.

"I apologize; he's not very good at knowing how much information is too much information," she says, more than just her cheeks stained red now. With a calming breath, she continues. "I saw a feather, as dark and black as the night sky, on the ground by one of the back entrances. Since birds don't drop their feathers here, we thought it strange that there should be a fallen one, so we went into the dorms through the back. Lo and behold, there stood the Demon Scythe, closing the door to our room behind him. At his feet lay another feather or two.

"We stopped dead at the hallway entrance, staring at him. He must have felt our stares on him because he stopped, turned to us, and I _swear_ I saw something flicker in his eyes, even from that far away. But in the end, he just scowled at us, shoved his hands in his pockets, and slunk away," she explained.

"Feathers?" Maka lately echoes, and Tsu nods.

"Feathers. We can't yet identify the source, and despite picking them up, they dissipated into fragments of light that vanished just a second later, just like what happens when a soul resonance ends."

"So they must have come from me," Maka slowly says.

"Or the Demon Scythe," Patty pipes up, "You don't know what happened."

"Unlikely, since when I resonated with Tsu, she turned into the weapon and not me."

"Well, that's not _quite_ how it works here. As you know, the transformations _are_ divided into the two categories of 'weapon' and 'appearance', but when two 'weapons' resonate with each other, whoever initiated the resonance tends to have a predominantly visual transformation," Liz corrects. "You saw that on your first day here with Patty and I."

"Yeah! Lizzie, soul resonance!" Patty chirrups, and they transform, only this time it's Patty in cowgirl attire and Liz who is the gun. She holds up her sister and mimes shooting it here and there before they both allow the transformation to fall away. "You might have the weapon form, not him. No one but the Demon Scythe knows because the two of you were aaaall aloooone in a tiiiny, soundproof rooooom together doing whooo knooows whaaaat." By the end of her sentence, she's practically singing, grinning as she drags out each and every word so that her full implications may sink in.

" _Death_ , it's usually Black Star who's making the dick jokes," Tsubaki says under her breath, looking upward as if there's some god up there who can save her from the menace that is Patty taking after Black Star.

"And _you_ —" Patty continues, shooting finger guns at Maka— "forgot."

"To be fair, we call him the Demon _Scythe_. If he's not the one with the weapon transformation, then honestly, what are we doing with a name like that for him?" Maka argues.

"That's true," Liz says. "Probably has something to do with the scythe being the reaper's favored weapon and how we're all dead."

"But," Patty says, waggling her eyebrows, "We can't know for sure who's what in this relationship until you try again with us watching."

Her sister facepalms. "What happened to my dear, sweet kid sister?" she laments, then pivots to face Black Star's yet to be respawned body. "STOP MAKING DICK JOKES ALL THE TIME!"

Maka doesn't get it. She's not sure if she wants to, so as Liz scolds the clearly deaf body of Black Star, she looks at the silently brooding Jackie, who has been silently brooding in the corner for the entire conversation. Jackie glares back, but there's a bonding moment that happens between the two of them that's based off one shared thought: _what an idiot._

* * *

She hates that they're watching her, all four of them. Liz, Patty, Black Star, Tsubaki. Jackie went to take a three-hour afternoon nap; she didn't seem particularly interested in the matter anyway. She's been taking an awful lot of naps as of late, but it's really not all that much of Maka's concern. Being an idol probably just takes a lot of energy out of her.

She steals a glance back at the quartet spying on her, their heads peeking out from around a corner in a cartoonish manner, their eager expressions easily readable despite the half-hidden nature of their faces. Liz waggles her eyebrows, eliciting a glare from Maka, but there's really nothing she can do when they're all those meters away, so she simply sighs and turns back.

She's standing right next to the bleachers by the track in the uncomfortably warm afternoon sun, watching as NPCs (and most probably people) race around in their after school clubs. No one looks out of the ordinary, and she has to wonder _what_ exactly she's doing here. _The Demon Scythe wouldn't be here,_ she thinks, _he hates socializing…_ She steals a glance at her friends and wanders off towards the one place she _knows_ he'd be without question.

She can hear them oh-so-obviously following her, whispering and giggling among themselves, cracking every stick on the ground that they can or cannot find. She has to believe they're going out of their way to make a ruckus behind her, but it really doesn't matter. She has a mission to do; she can't just blo—

"Black Star, I can _HEAR_ you yelling ' _STEALTH MODE!'_ behind me!" she snaps, twirling around to face them, thoroughly ticked off.

"WHO, ME? THE GREATEST ASSASSIN TO EVER ASSASSINATE WITH HIS GREAT ASSASSIN SKILLS OF ASSASSININESS?" the said greatest assassin to ever assassinate with his great assassin skills of assassininess hollers back. "NAAAAH… YOU CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING. _I AM THE_ _ **NIGHT.**_ "

It's fortunate she decided to bring her book with her in case she didn't find the Demon Scythe with them watching, otherwise she'd have nothing to bean Black Star in the face with that wasn't a rock. Even now, she's considering throwing them anyway.

Deftly catching it out of the air, he yells, "GOT YOUR NERD HOBBY HOSTAGE!"

" _SCREW_ YOU!"

"SORRY, THAT JOB'S CURRENTLY TAKEN."

" _TAKEN?_ " Maka roars, equal parts enraged and confused. Tsubaki turns away, embarrassed, so her lack of participation in making Black Star stop fighting is excusable. Liz and Patty, on the other hand, while shocked at first, look nearly _gleeful_ now. Maka near wants to throw books at their faces, too, but she's out of books and room to care about them at the moment. The assassin is her main problem right now.

"WHY DON'T YOU ASK YOUR PARTNER?" he continues, "HE'S RIGHT THERE, YOU KNOW!"

" _ **WHAT?!**_ " She pivots around in an instant to see that, yes, the Demon Scythe _is_ indeed standing there, his face blank as he takes a sip of coffee in the sudden silence, his other hand tucked into his jacket pocket. As he glances back and forth between her quartet of stalkers and herself, her face suddenly becomes the sun above them, becoming uncomfortably warm uncomfortably fast. Maka wishes so, so much that she hadn't already thrown her book at Black Star because dammit _dammit DAMMIT_ she doesn't want him to see how she's feeling.

He opens his mouth to say something, but it never comes out because before he can even try to make a noise, the overwhelmed Maka instead puts on her most determined face, marches over to the Demon Scythe, grabs him by the arm, and drags him away with her. She doesn't think she could blush any harder, but Black Star has no shame, as his immature whooping seems to exemplify. (She wills her face to cool down and stop blushing, but ignoring Black Star might as well be the same as pretending you're not drowning when breathing underwater because it's _damn_ impossible.) If anything, it only makes her drag the scythe away ever faster.

They don't go far, stopping to hide in the space between the southward side of the music building and a poplar tree. It's just outside of her friends' field of vision, and she hopes Tsu is enough to keep Black Star from jumping in on them— yet strangely, Maka looks and sounds like she'd just sprinted a mile, her breath labored and cheeks cherry red.

She looks up at the Demon Scythe, who towers above her (though that's not really saying much), his eyes mildly curious, but his face otherwise blank.

 _Might as well get to the point,_ she thinks, but before she can even complete her thought, she find she's already talking. "You. HQ. Tonight. Please."

And though she fails at eloquence, he still understands her, perhaps because their souls are apparently on the same wavelength.

Some detail hashing and awkward conversation later ("They're not just gonna stab me, right?"), they're about to part, but she remembers something equally important just in time.

"Wait!" she calls as he saunters off, and he stops and turns to face her. "We don't know each other's names." She walks the few steps up to him and thrusts out her hand. "Maka. Maka Albarn."

He hesitates for a moment, as if considering rejecting it. But he comes around, taking his free hand out of his pocket for the first time in their conversation, and accepts her handshake.

It's like a shock of lightning runs through her when he does, and she has to keep herself from flinching when he says, "Soul Eater."

* * *

She lies upside down on one of the couches in HQ, the noontime light streaming into the room reflecting off the coffee table between couches and sending glares into her eyes no matter how she adjusts her gaze. Frustrated, she sighs and sits properly.

She can't go back to her room— it's locked and Tsu won't respond when she knocks— so her only options are to go to class or hang around elsewhere. And since _Liz_ is busy, too, she hasn't got anyone to hang out with, so wasting time waiting for the Demon Scythe in HQ is just as productive. Jackie is her only company, though that doesn't mean much, for all she does is sulk in the corner. The room is otherwise empty and _deathly_ silent.

For a few minutes, Maka tries to entertain herself with her thoughts, but silence, while golden to some, becomes _agony_ to Maka as it slowly drives her insane. A few more minutes, and she can't take it anymore. "Why don't you go sulk in your room?"

It takes a while to get a response, but she _does_ get one.

"Ox is sacrificing his stupid pillar hair to a shrine he made to Kim with all the stuff of hers in our room," she stiffly replies.

 _Ah._ Maka's sympathy shoots through the roof. Dealing with Ox is already a tiresome job, but dealing with _him_ dealing with his _hair_ is even worse. Add in his now-open obsession with Kim to the mix and it sounds like _she's_ going to be avoiding Jackie's dorm for the next few days, too. "Sounds painful," she comments.

Jackie nods, a disgusted frown upon her face. "Good riddance with the hair, though."

Maka pauses. "I thought our appearances don't change here, since we're dead and all, except when resonating."

Jackie cracks half a smile. "Looks like his head is going to be as shiny as a waxed tile floor for all of eternity now. Well, we never did get another lamp to work alongside me after we put together the band." Both girls laugh.

"What's even with his hair, anyway? Do you know?"

"No idea, but Kim and I used to joke that he's here because Shibusen never let him grow his hair like out because it was against dress code and that's his entire tragic backstory."

 _Huh. Yet another entry in the Shibusen thread?_ Is this afterlife strictly for victims of _that one school_? Or perhaps she's reading too much into it; correlation does not equal causation, after all, and her sample size (containing only herself, Tsu, Black Star, Kim, and the Thompsons) is far too small to not be skewed. _Well, might as well ask…_ "How was Shibusen to you?"

Jackie's expression darkens, and suddenly, Maka wishes she hadn't asked, though the twinge curiosity inside her is both satisfied and hungrier because of it. "Sorry I asked."

She grunts. "I tend to hold grudges, sorry. It's been a long while since, but even so, I've only ever really told Kim."

"That bad, huh?"

"I was a scapegoat."

Maka blinks, hardly able to process the miniscule snippet of information that has just been presented to her, and so suddenly, too. It must show, because Jackie sends her a glare that could rival daggers in its sharp hostility and continues:

"I was in the EAT class at Shibusen, on a team of the elites in our year. We were sent on a routine mission to take down some no-name minion who happened to make it onto Shinigami's list, but everything was miscalculated. It wasn't a meaningless minion we encountered, it was a fully-fledged witch with soul protect on. She was the chameleon witch, so she could turn invisible, too, so as we wandered through her territory, she was able to pick us all off one by one until only I remained." Angry tears form at the corners of her eyes, and she looks like she wants to set the whole afterlife on fire with only her stare.

Maka says nothing. What _can_ she say? Clearly, this is something very personal to Jackie; what backstory _isn't_ , regardless of how tragic it is? To comment on it in only the offhand and detached manner that she's capable of would be rude and disrespectful.

Fortunately, she's spared the trouble of trying, as Jackie (finally!) breaks away from the wall and storms out of the room. " _I'm going to go kick Ox's sorry little bum. Teach him to intrude on_ our _room_ ," she mutters. Maka sends her silent encouragement. She, too, would like to see Ox's sorry little bum kicked because, frankly, in her opinion, he rather deserves it.

The door slams shut, shaking the room a bit, and Maka decides in the silence that follows that she doesn't want to be here when Kid comes back to see the symmetry of the room ruined.

* * *

The golden hour is when he said he'd come, and, leaning against the railing atop the school rooftop, she can definitely tell the time is rapidly approaching. Her stomach churns with nervous anticipation, both not wanting to be late nor to meet him again when she knows everyone's attention will be on _them_. As _partners_. Or a couple, depending on Black Star's obnoxiousness levels. Which, considering Black Star, are likely to be through the roof.

Maka groans aloud, burying her face in her hands at the thought of it. She hopes Tsu can keep him from being a total loudmouthed egomaniac for the entire meeting, otherwise… well, there's no penalty for death in the afterlife.

She stares moodily off into the distance, watching as the sky begins to burn a pinkish-orange and bathes all the school with warm golden light. There's no escaping it now. She hauls herself up and heads down the stairs, ready for the confrontation of an afterlife. She can kiss the quiet alone time she's had up until now goodbye forever because nothing will ever take the public eye off of her after this. _Nothing._

She stares at the doorknob as she stands before their headquarters, bracing herself for everything to come as she finally opens the door.

She's greeted with (almost) everyone there and dead silence. Black Star and Tsubaki are notably absent. Feeling awkward, she notes that their stares are not upon her, but on something just behind her. She gets the strangest sinking feeling in her gut as she turns around to see, but alas, she turns too fast. She begins to fall without seeing who's there.

She never hits the floor.

Her head is spinning, but she still hears the stifled gasp coming from someone in the room and blinks away the dizziness just as she gets pulled back up to find herself face to face with the Demon Scythe, one very nonplussed Soul Eater.

He lets go of her hand and cracks half a grin at her reddening face. Without a word, he saunters into the room, wearily eyeing everyone and their stares, and leans with his arms crossed against the wall. Maka, now the only one standing in the doorway, doesn't look at anyone as she slinks over to a couch and plops down next to Patty.

Kid in the too-large swivel chair at the head of the room clears his throat, calling to attention all present in the room, including the rather reluctant Maka. He scans the room, making eye contact with everyone in it, before suddenly allowing his regular stoic expression fall into one of utter despair and dramatically and loudly slamming his face into the desk, effectively shocking everyone with his facedesk. "I'VE BEEN LIVING A _LIE_!" he moans into the desk.

The shock is tangible now; bewildered looks are exchanged all around, and no one's eyes are any smaller than saucers. The only exception would be Patty, whose misplaced laughter is the only thing in the room keeping it from getting awkward.

Liz gently pats him on the back ( _Ah, so that's why she was standing beside Kid rather than on the couch with Patty_ , Maka thinks.), saying, "There, there, Kiddo. It's all right. Just tell them the truth like you told Patty and me. Take your time."

A few sniffles later, and Kid manages to splutter out a few more coherent lines, but they're all bemoaning his status as scum of the earth for keeping such a secret from everyone. If her mind wasn't already racing with confusion, Maka would be silently asking for his explanation behind all this.

He manages to compose himself, straightening up and looking at all those present. "…That was a little more awkward than anticipated," he mutters, but everyone pretends they didn't see or hear anything. Maka glances over at Soul, and their eyes meet for just a second before Kid's face turns solemn.

"Shibusen was a part of all of our pasts," he begins, and one or two people nod. "To no one was it kind, so therefore there are none present in this room now who died a supporter of the school. It was ignorant of its students' problems, individuality, and situations. It suffered from poor scope, control, and management."

"Scapegoat syndrome," Jackie grumbles just loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, and to her and everyone else's surprise, Kid nods seriously, as if he were just about to say that.

"Indeed, we did have a problem with accepting blame."

" _We_?"

"Yes, _we_." There's something about Kid's voice that sounds a little nervous, frightened even, but Maka can't quite place it. "Of the eight segments of Shinigami-sama that helped to govern Shibusen and, by extension, the world, I represented balance." His voice is even, level, as if he's practiced these words a thousand times in his head yet still needs a bit more time to consider their impact before saying them aloud. "The worth of things and of actions. Right and wrong. Essentially, I was the physical embodiment of karma. And while I never became headmaster, with this, I had the power to prevent your tragedies, yet chose not to."

He pauses to look at everyone, and not a peep is uttered. Maka's mind is reeling. _How can he have been the first of the Battalion to arrive, yet still have impacted all their tragedies? Was his influence in life that vast, or does he still hold some influence over the living realm even now, in purgatory? What does any of this have to do with Soul?_

"Well, _why not_?" Kilik, a member she is not particularly familiar with, asks, breaking the silence (and her train of thought) and bristling with anger.

Kid flinches a bit at his tone, but he still remains composed.

"I thought it was right to judge people the way I did when it was happening. I thought that since people had sinned in some way, they deserved to end up the way they did." He lowers his gaze. "I didn't realize how much nuance I failed to see and passed that way of judgement onto whatever successor I may have had after I died. For all that, I apologize. For my rigid ways in the past, and to the Demon Scythe, whom I understand is our target for reasons too outdated to be valid any longer."

Everyone's gaze immediately turns to Soul, whose eyes betray his surprise.

"I know just saying sorry won't fix the antagonistic feelings the group I've led has towards you," Kid says, bringing the attention back to himself. "Nor will just saying sorry obligate you to accept this apology. You _don't_ have to accept it. But I would at least like to extend an invitation for you to join the community we have built out of this Battalion, to join your partner and the rest of us in our changed goal to find the purpose of this purgatory hell called high school."

His monologue finished, all sights again creep back to Soul, who stands leaning against the wall for a few more seconds, processing the offer, before his face slowly splits into a grin.

"Cool."

* * *

 ** _author's note iii._** _When I first started writing this fic, I don't think I was even done with the manga yet. Almost, but not quite. I didn't even finish the anime until halfway through part four. Sooo there's probably more than a few discrepancies with canon. Anime canon, more likely, since I'm sure you've noticed that the fic tends to adhere more closely to the manga canon than the anime canon (use of shinigami-sama's list rather than kishin eggs, calling it shibusen vs. the dwma, etc.), but at the same time I was pleasantly surprised at some of the subconscious predictions I made that show up in the fic that I ended up seeing in the anime._

 _did... did you know this was supposed to be a oneshot? ;uu; the only reason it's even split into parts is bc i know i wouldn't be able to read a 48k word long oneshot so i decided to split it. my chapters are usually really short._


	4. fly through the night

**Word Count:** 12,792

* * *

"…He was really looking forward to finally getting the Demon Scythe killed for once after the meeting because he was _so convinced_ that you all were going to capture him," Tsubaki explains to Maka as they stand off to the side, watching passively as Soul ducks when a chair whizzes by him, smashing to smithereens against the wall. "He was planning on jumping in on the meeting after he got captured and scaring him to death. Though, I doubt Soul's getting any sleep tonight with Black Star as a roommate."

Maka doesn't know how she's supposed to feel or what she's supposed to do in response to all this.

Laughing is a definite option. After all, watching Black Star go nuts because he's supposed to room with Soul now _is_ fairly amusing, especially when it results in a nearly cartoonish tape division through the room they're to share from now on. But something tells her that Black Star's rage is not something to be trifled with, and laughing now would simply result in her waking up in the infirmary again.

Maka looks up at Tsu. "Aren't you going to stop him?" she asks, and to that, her friend shrugs.

"It's probably best to let him get it all out. He'll be over it in around a day or so, I'm guessing," she replies.

Watching them, Maka finds such a thing hard to believe.

Black Star yells, stars in his eyes, launching himself at the poor albino boy, who shoots her a pleading look before dashing down the hall to escape, his cool and elegant evasive maneuvers useless against an opponent this erratic and in a space this confined.

But at the same time, she's sure there's nothing they can't adjust to.

(There's a disturbingly loud crash, followed by a series of thumping that sound not unlike someone rolling down the stairs, a shatter, and the yowling of a cat. Black Star yells in triumph, but the girls can still hear the very faint moan of, " _I'm okay…_ ")

Eventually.

* * *

 **Flowers are happy…**

 _Tsubaki stared out the window. It was a Saturday, so there was no class that day, which was good. She needed every excuse she could take to avoid people._

 _Somebody knocked on her door, and she mumbled, "Come in."_

"Tsubaki." _No response._ "Tsubaki, you have to get up." _Still none._ "I want to go on another mission."

" _No."_

 _A frown._ "It's been two weeks. We're going to need remedial lessons if we don't go on missions. You need to move on."

 _Apathy. She at least shifted in bed, but only to cover her head with more blanket._

 _Her partner "tch"ed in irritation._ "I'm going to switch partners if you don't get up. It's not difficult paperwork."

 _A jolt of fear involuntarily ran through her at the mention of being abandoned, and she bolted upright in bed. No, no, no; she couldn't be abandoned, not when the only family, metaphorical or literal, she had left was her partner. Not when her blood relatives scorned her for what she had done, for killing the firstborn, for becoming a demonic weapon._

 _She looked up at her partner with fear in her eyes._

 _The frown flipped up into a strangely smug grin._ "So you'll go out on a mission with me?"

 _She nodded, already filing away the incident of two weeks prior away into her memory, never to be thought of again._

* * *

It's almost like a cartoon, the sharp contrast between the two halves of the room as dictated by a simple line of duct tape. Maka finds herself staring into the two boys' room, casually observing and absorbing their personalities just by how their half is organized. But, the longer she stares, the more she realizes that Star and Soul are far more similar than they might like to care to admit.

Both are lazy and messy, though Black Star while seems more prone to keeping random junk strewn about on his half, Soul has a plethora of instruments and music posters lying about, but both have seemingly little regard for any sense of categorical organization.

Soul at least keeps his stuff to his side (or maybe Black Star fusses if it crosses the line), but she can tell that some of Star's stuff is leaking into the other side, if the star-shaped décor is anything to go by.

She hears footsteps coming up behind her, and she turns to see who it is. "Oh, Tsubaki. They're not still duking it out at the track, are they?"

"Well, yes and no."

"Explain."

"They're not at the track anymore."

To nobody's surprise, it turned out that Black Star is _very_ adamant on killing Soul at least once before accepting the fact that they are no longer enemies, so much so that he'd been constantly ambushing the scythe at every opportunity he had that they were in any room (aside from their dorm) together for the last day or so.

Maka sighs. "Where are they, then?"

"Tearing up the gardens right outside. If you listen carefully, you could probably hear them yelling."

She does more than listen: she carefully steps into the boys' dorm in front of them, creeps across the room, and looks out their window to take in the sight described.

The sun is setting now, casting a lovely golden light upon all the land. The golden hour is upon them once again, just as it had been when they had first made truce with the Demon Scythe, and she hopes it is now that the day-long feud will come to an end.

She glances down upon the garden. _Well, at least the flowers needed to get replaced soon anyways…_ she thinks, and notes that the two are wisely staying away from the rosebushes. "You know, it shouldn't _be_ that surprising, but Soul's remarkably good at evasive maneuvers, as erratic as Black Star's attacks are."

Tsubaki hums in agreement. "Well, he _has_ spent the last eternity in purgatory avoiding all of our attacks. It might be a while until they do become friends, but I get the feeling that's not quite true."

"Real—"

 _Thunk!_ The distinctive noise of a body hitting a door resounds through the air, and Maka again turns her attention out the window, craning her neck to see what had just transpired below them.

There, just beneath the window, Soul lies beside an opened door, killed from the blunt force trauma. Jackie steps out, takes a glance at her victim, and walks away as if nothing of note had happened.

Black Star whoops with joy, the swiftness of his mood swing a little disturbing.

"DING-DONG, THE DEMON'S DEAD!" he cries, spinning around just once. He looks up at the two girls staring out his room window and beams. "TSUBAKIII!" Aforementioned girl smiles and waves, receiving a blown kiss in return.

Maka decides she doesn't need to see this stuff and exits, wanting to make sure that Soul wakes up fine in the infirmary later.

* * *

… **in the summer.**

 _Raining and raining, but it was not a pretty thing for Black Star._

 _Caked in mud and stars flashing in his eyes, he adjusted his grip on his weapon. He stood before a team of seven students, all of them sporting some sort of cartoonish skull on their clothes, ready to fight atop the piles of bleeding corpses beneath their feet. He was the last one standing. He would defeat them; he would carry on the ways of his ancestors and their ancestors, storing up a vast vault of wealth._

 _With a spirited yell, he charged at them, but the older meister effortlessly knocked his weapon out of his hand with a single well-placed hit; meanwhile, another student tackled him, put him in a headlock, and managed to pin him to the ground._

 _He writhed and bit and scratched, but at the end of it all, it was all he could do to spit the mud from his mouth at the feet of a third and glare daggers._

 _There was some form of false pity on the third's face, causing Black Star to scowl in response. They spun their weapon around a few times and mused about how terribly pitiful it all was before all the world went black._

* * *

She's fascinated with the way the dying moonlight shines through the window and hits the Demon Scythe's messy, white hair just so, making it appear nearly translucent from her perspective, especially so since he's just barely three-quarters respawned in the infirmary bed.

Having never _seen_ anyone respawn before, since no one that she particularly cared about ever died, the respawn process is just as fascinating to Maka as the subject of Soul's hair, and she lays her upper body upon the bed and rests her head on her arms, staring at him with curiosity as he slowly comes back to life before her eyes.

She's been waiting by his bedside all night for him to return, and it's through drowsy eyes that she watches him still, struggling to remain awake.

However, it's a fruitless struggle, and she has fallen asleep before the first pale grey rays of dawn break from over the horizon.

* * *

 **In autumn, they die and are blown away.**

 _Whispers, whispers. It's what kids should be doing when talking in class, if talking at all, but Jackie wished that they would just shut up altogether. She knew they were talking about her. She knew she was the star of their gossip, of their rumors, of their little chats between classes._

"Dude, have you heard? Jackie's back in school. Can you believe the nerve she has, considering all that she did on her last mission?"

 _She was tired of correcting them, but her reputation was on the line. Well, not that it wasn't already soiled. Whatever. No one believed her anymore anyway._

"I hear that she knew the witch they fought beforehand and that that's why she wasn't killed along with the rest of them."

 _That's not true; she was saved by the arrival of an upperclassman, who chased the witch off._

"I'm pretty sure she arranged all of it. I mean, have you seen the way she acts like she's better than us? She must have gotten tired of dragging her teammates' grades up but was too lazy to do the paperwork to change teams."

 _She did_ not _consider herself better than everyone—! She had pride in her grades, and the gist of her work ethic consisted of 'work before play is the only way to spend one's day', but she was far from having a superiority complex!_

"The school should do something to get rid of her before she gets another partner. Who knows what might happen if she feels the same way again."

 _Her hand was shaking, causing her locker door to rattle slightly as she gripped it tightly. The urge to set them all on fire was powerful, but she had to_ _ **control herself**_ _._

"Yeah, but just expulsion might not be enough. She's a murderer, remember? She killed her own teammates. How heartless is that?"

 _She did not she did not she did not she did not she did not she did not she did not she did not she did not she did not she did not_ _ **she did not she did not she did not she did not**_

"Man, I want to shake the hand of the person who brought her back. I mean, subduing a murderer _and_ a witch at the same time? They must be _so_ cool."

 _It was not her fault it was not her fault it was not her fault it was not her fault it was not her fault it was not her fault it was not her fault it was not her fault it was not her fault it was not her fault_ _ **it was not her fault it was not her fault it was not her fault it was not her fault**_

"Miss Jacqueline O'Lantern Dupré. Please report to Shinigami-sama's office."

 _If the rattling of her locker door and her intense stare didn't garner attention from all the students passing her by in the halls, the public call for her to the headmaster's office sure did. All eyes were on her as she lifted her head up to see the reaper's favorite weapon up on the announcement screen with a frown upon his face._

"I repeat: Miss Jacqueline O'Lantern Dupré, please report to Shinigami-sama's office."

 _She slammed her locker shut, storming down the hall. The crowd of students parted like the Red Sea before her as she headed off to face her fate._

* * *

She's awakened rudely just a few hours later by a certain blue-haired nuisance crashing into the infirmary, yelling his salutations at the top of his lungs. She's still just barely adjusting to her newfound consciousness as her roommate drags said nuisance away by the collar, halfheartedly chiding him for waking the two of them up when they so clearly had been having a moment. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she notices that Soul is also waking up, panicking slightly, in the cot before her.

" _BRO_ ," Black Star yells. "BRO, WE GOTTA—"

He never gets to finish his sentence because out of instinct, Maka snatches a book from the bedside table and lobs it square at his face, where its spine hits her target full on.

The cot is empty for just a few seconds as Soul picks himself up and out of it and Tsubaki drags her partner into it.

"…Black Star's an asshole," Maka tells him as her way of apologizing, but Soul just shrugs her off.

"He's not trying to kill me anymore, so that's at least an improvement."

Kid pokes his head into the room, and everyone turns to look at him. He opens his mouth to say something, but abruptly closes it, narrowing his eyes. Pointing at the book Maka had just thrown, he says, "That book is off center. Please return it to its original location before proceeding anywhere else."

"Well, hello to you too, Kid." Soul drawls, crossing his arms and sending a little glare his way.

"Don't you sass me."

"Yeah, whatever."

* * *

 **Dry and withered,**

 _He had but one memory of the time before purgatory, and it was of his two young weapons, earth shamans that had followed him everywhere in life and yet were nowhere to be seen after it. Running his fingers through the loose soil of the freshly tilled garden plots, Kilik wondered if he would ever get to see them again._

 _He picked up a handful of dirt and gave in to the strange urge he had to pack it into shapes that vaguely resembled that of his weapons in life, and when he was finished, he blew life into them._

 _Mere instants after he finished doing so, the two little dolls made of earth came to life, blinking up at him with wide, blue eyes full of curiosity and confusion, perfect replicas of his old partners._

 _His heart leapt up to his throat, then dropped down into his stomach, choking him up with memories of a life gone by, with the realization that they had all died together because of him. Two innocent lives gone because of a mistake he made when he was alive._

 _A tear hit the dirt, and the two animated dolls disintegrated back into the dirt. No, no, no, no,_ no _; he couldn't allow this, his memories of life were already fading into nothingness again, he couldn't let himself simply forget about all his sins—_

 _He breathed life into them once more, but when he remembered who he used to be, he refrained from crying. Everything was all right. Fire and Thunder were right there beside him; they're all okay…_

* * *

Maka realizes as she sits in a physics class, half listening and half staring out the window, that aside from Liz, Tsubaki, and Black Star, there's so much she doesn't know about the other members of the Anti-Demon Scythe Battalion, recently renamed to _Spartoi_ , after the skeletal warriors of Greek mythology, to more accurately represent their organization's actions. Sure, she got a little bit out of Jackie the other day, but not enough to really understand why she is who she is today. She realizes that she _wants_ to know the rest of the team better.

A rumpled-up ball of paper hits her on the side of her head, irritating her but still effectively getting her attention. She glares in the direction of whomever had thrown it and spies a certain rival of hers a few seats away pushing his glasses higher up upon his nose and showing off his near-perfect test score with a smug grin.

She looks down upon her own returned paper, and while she finds it isn't nearly up to par with her standards at only 76%, she also discovers that she doesn't particularly care. It's the afterlife. She doesn't have _college_ to go to afterwards. It ain't infinity and beyond: it's anxiety at uncertainty.

So she balls up her returned test and beans Ox right on his nose.

(All the way across the room, Soul shoots her a grin and a thumbs up that she does not notice.)

The bell rings almost immediately afterwards, and as Maka packs up and subsequently leaves the room, her expression is as smug as can be.

* * *

 **their petals dance on the wind.**

Your grades do not define you.

 _Ox knew that. He'd been hearing it all the time lately. But it doesn't make the sting of seeing that bright, red_ F _on his paper any less biting or painful._

What happened to him?

 _It was a question he pondered himself standing before Death's door, called in for yet another chat about his less and less certain spot in Shibusen. As a child, before moving to Death City and enrolling as a meister, he'd been praised by all his teachers._

He's so smart. Such a bright boy.

 _Yet, there he was, barrelling down the track to dropout at terminal velocity. It was perplexing, a puzzle he could not solve, like a man without eyes, spying plums upon a tree, neither taking nor leaving plums. How could this be?_

He could go wherever he wants when he grows up as long as he doesn't lose motivation. He's clearly going to be a very important person when he graduates college.

 _He was very near shaking as he entered the room and walked the long, long path marked by guillotines he swore would let loose and sever his head from his shoulder any given moment. Not that it hadn't already got a few loose screws, but he would rather like to keep his head where it belonged, thank you very much._

"Ah, Ox! Welcome, welcome. Do have a seat at the coffee table. Would you like some coffee? Or perhaps tea? I'm always sure to have a bit of both on hand, so how does that sound?"

" _Shinigami-sama."_

"Hmmmm?"

" _Cut to the chase and tell me the truth. Why am I here?" (_ Control your shaking. Control your shaking. _)_

"Are you sure about that, Ox?"

 _The reaper's voice was not unkind, but in fact quite gentle. It was as if Ox were made of spun glass: something fragile but beautiful, yet ultimately useless._

"Yes."

 _There was a prolonged sigh that escaped from underneath the cartoonish skull mask the headmaster always had donned, its expression nearly regretful, nearly wistful—_ nearly.

"Due to prolonged poor grades and performance on missions, I have no choice but to expel you, Ox. You do not have to come to school tomorrow."

 _And just like that, it felt as though his vision had been shattered._

* * *

"Soul. Soul. _Souuulll_!"

"What, Maka."

"Would you please play piano for me again?"

It's been over a week since they've agreed to stop fighting Soul, and while the tensions have died somewhat, that's not what she cares about. What's currently bothering her is that she hasn't heard him play piano since, and she misses it.

She stares up at him, her eyes wide and hopeful that he will say yes this time. She misses his dark and moody music. He sighs, rubbing his temples as they stop in the middle of the hall, streams of NPCs swirling by them, a few giving them irritated looks. "I said, _no."_

She hardly has time to feel crestfallen. (She doesn't catch the guilt that flashes in his eyes.) The NPCs are already growing rude about their occupation and blockade of the _middle of the hall_.

"KISS, KISS, FALL IN LOVE, SUCKERS," one of them calls as yet another knocks into her, causing her to stumble forward. (Her face turns red.) "OR ELSE STOP CLOGGING THE HALLWAY."

She can't see who said it, and it didn't sound like anyone she knows, but before she can even feel crestfallen at his answer, in an instant she turns around and leaves the building with a scowl.

"Oh, Maka!" Emotions still roaring within her, Maka sharply pivots in the direction of the voice and is met with slightly shocked shocking blue eyes staring straight back at her. "I've been looking for you. We were going to go out with Jackie and listen to her practice guitar, remember?"

The blood rush dies down, and Maka shakes away the remaining clouds in her mind. "Oh yeah…" It's of slight comfort to her now that the disappointment of not being able to listen to Soul's piano playing has had the time to sink in. "They're starting a new piece today, huh?"

Liz nods. "Apparently, Tsugumi hasn't got quite the same quality of voice as Kim did, so while she can sing all the songs just fine, the filters aren't calibrated quite right and add a lot of noise, so until they can fine-tune that, they need to learn some songs in her actual range." She links arms with Maka and begins to pull her away with a smile. "Let's go!"

As they leave to Jackie's dormitory, Maka glances back at the building she had just left and watches as Soul slinks away to the music building. She juts her lower lip out just a bit. _**I**_ _wanted to listen to him practice…_

Yet, she knows all the same to leave him be and faces forward, looking forward to a different practice session. (But a practice session all the same.)

* * *

 **Like little brown butterflies.**

 _Hushed voices and furtive stares as he walked the hallowed halls of Shibusen. It could mean that his underclassmen respected him, were in awe of him, and simply revered his presence. Could._

 _He knew better than to think it actually was. Even through the strange lenses of his glasses, he could see the flashes of fear as they turned away when they thought he met their eyes. They were terrified of him, that much was true._

" _You'd think that someone with a last name like Éclair would have a sweeter personality," he caught someone whispering._

" _But does it matter?" the stranger's friend whispered back. "He's one of the elite weapons in the school. He gets the job done, regardless of whether he acts like a robot or not."_

 _He turned his head towards the two kids just the slightest, and they instantly froze. The three remained like that for but half a second, though it felt like hours._

 _Harvar continued on to class, leaving his underclassmen trembling in their shoes._

 _He didn't care. This was all he'd ever wanted, wasn't it? To be seen, to be respected, and to be_ feared.

* * *

The door opens abruptly about half an hour into Jackie's practice session, and the agitated face of Soul pokes in through the doorway. "One of your E strings is flat, your G string is too sharp, and don't even get me _started_ on how terribly boring those four chords are."

Maka blinks at him, understanding absolutely none of what he had just said. Jackie glares at him, folding her arms across from her chest. He ignores her and continues on:

"You're teaching that new girl how to sing, right? Because she has a couple problems. She puts a lot of H's in front of her vowels, she makes her vowels _way_ too nasally, and she keeps switching down an octave when she can't hit the note with her chest voice. It's kinda gross. It's even worse 'cause her voice is so high pitched." He cocks his head slightly and observes Jackie, who is growing more and more irritated by the criticism. "While I'm here, I'd also like to point out that your drummer has a terrible sense of rhythm. She keeps dragging the bass, which makes the rest of the song sound terribly out of sync, and your pianist always looks and sounds like she's trying to attack the keys—"

Maka flinches. It's remarkable how much force Jackie put into the pillow she threw at Soul and how loud the resulting _thwack!_ is.

"GET _OUT!"_ yells Jackie, boiling with rage. "AND DON'T YOU _DARE_ OBLITERATE ANY OF OUR OTHER MEMBERS, YOU _DEMON_."

"Hey, hey. Calm down, Ja—" Liz begins, but after a scowl and a bit of a glare from Soul to all three of them, she stops.

The door begins to close, but Maka, not wanting to remain in the same room as an emotional Jackie, jumps up, sparing only an apologetic glance for Liz as she follows him into the hall.

" _Souuul,"_ she calls, and however begrudgingly, he stops and waits the few seconds for her to catch up, though he still looks irritated.

She doesn't say anything more, though. They stand facing each other for a minute, but at long last he sighs and begins walking again. She follows, and together, they walk to the music building in silence.

"If you want to see what proper piano playing looks like," he grumbles as he opens a practice room door, "I suppose you can come and watch."

Her face lights up, and she hums as they walk inside. They squeeze onto the bench together, her heart full and happy just to be there in the room. Soul contemplates a piece for a few moments, but the music soon begins.

Maka will never grow tired of listening to him practice. Even when he has to nearly shout out the counting to get the rhythms right or play the same snippets over and over again, there's something wonderful about being by his side and listening to the music he creates.

"Soul," she says, "play that one song you played when I first came to the music building, on that first night in the wee hours of the morning."

"No," he answers, not missing a beat as he then continues counting under his breath.

"Why not?"

"Why do you want to hear it so damn much?"

"I liked it. I think it's nice. Kind of a shame you don't play it a whole lot," she says. "After all, what's the point of having a music box if you never hear its song?"

(She's not looking at him, so she misses the half second of surprise that flashes across his face, though his fingers continue playing automatically.)

"Are you calling me some kind of toy, to hear its song played on loop as long as you care to hear it, only to abandon it once you've grown bored of its sound?" he gruffly asks.

" _No!"_ she says a little bit too loudly. Soul ceases his practicing and folds his hands on his lap. She quietly adds, "I just like listening to it. That's all. So would you play it again?"

He sighs—

"Please?"

—and puts his hands on the keys once again.

"All right, Maka. Because you like it."

* * *

 _He had no name for that piece in particular, but even then, he knew there was something about it that very much related to his soul, for even though he was but twelve years old, he had searched himself inside and out, drawing the notes out from even the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind and putting them to paper._

 _They told him when he arrived at Shibusen, a scared little boy hardly knowing how to transform into a scythe and back, that your partner had to be someone your soul could get along with with as little conflict as possible; to some degree, one's partner was like a soulmate._

 _But he was shy. He could hardly introduce himself to anyone, let alone see if their souls were compatible. How would he ever find a meister if he couldn't even find it in himself to say hello?_

 _He had a song. One that was drawn from deep within himself, one that could sing what he wanted to say and allow whomsoever he chose, whether that be the world or just his future partner, know exactly who he was. He would speak without words the story that was his own. And hey!— nonverbal communication was invaluable between partners. It was the perfect plan._

 _A girl found him on one of the first days of school. She was petite, with honey-blonde ringlets done up in twin tails, bright blue eyes, and a mouth that seemed to be always pouting. She liked music and seemed to like him. It was the ideal situation._

 _Together, they went to the coffee shop around the corner. She remained a respectful distance away as he sat down, uncovered the keys, and began to play._

 _A shatter, a stop, and a bloodcurdling shriek. He was hardly even a few bars into the piece; his soul was not even in it yet. Panicking, he turned to look at her, and his hope withered and died at the sight of her horrified face. He hadn't even the chance to explain or even get any words in as she fled._

 _His heart sank. Slowly, he covered the keys again. He pushed the bench back beneath the piano, apologized to the owner (thanked his lucky stars the shop was otherwise empty), and trudged back to school. Alone._

 _Music boxes have a song locked within them all day long. Once they're opened up, you'll hear what's there._

 _But for a music box to be wanted, the music it makes must be beautiful and harmonious, not chaotic and discordant. No one in this life would want a broken music box, not if the good one was even worse._

 _Some boxes are left unopened._

 _Soul threw away the key._

* * *

The transformation is slow, gradual. With her eyes closed so that she can better listen, she doesn't even notice it until she feels the swishing of a skirt somewhere around her ankles. Curious as ever, Maka opens her eyes to find her clothes transformed into a long, black dress with heels she's almost scared to walk in; reaching up to her hair, she finds a fluffy, little, black wing by the base of each pigtail.

Soul seems not to have noticed, his gaze still transfixed to the keys, but he's changed as well. Gone is the leather jacket, the black denim jeans, the unkempt hair kept in place by a headband. Now wearing a black pinstriped suit and red tie, he looks nearly professional. (The gelled hair spiked in such a way that makes it look messy kills the professionalism.)

His face frightens her a bit. Scrunched up in furious concentration, she swears he looks like he's out to spite someone, but she can't look away.

The song comes to an abrupt halt, and she flinches at the way he crashes down on all the sour notes.

He looks at her, scrutinizing her expression, and grunts. "Knew you wouldn't like it."

Maka bristles. (She may have been startled and a little bit scared, but that doesn't instantly define her judgement!) "I _did_ like it, though!"

Soul leans in until she can feel his breath upon her lips, never once breaking eye contact. "Prove it."

She doesn't back down. "Prove what?" she asks, daring him to say it out loud.

"That you liked my music. That you like me despite it."

 _That I like him despite it?_ she wonders. That's not something she'd been expecting. Her heart begins to pound and her palms get sweaty. There is exactly one way coming to her short-circuiting mind that will prove to him without a doubt that she likes him despite his dark and stormy music. She tells herself it's nothing as she leans forward and closes her eyes, though in truth it's something she's been dying to do for some time now.

Chaste and light, the kiss lasts no longer than a few seconds, if that even that at all, but to the both of them, it feels like it lasts forever and a day.

(In all honesty, she _doesn't_ want the moment to end.)

She pulls away.

Their resonance fades away, transforming them back into their normal appearances, and she meets his gaze.

"I _do_ like you."

* * *

Tsubaki notices something is different about her from the second she reenters their room.

"Maka," she says, watching curiously as the other girl crosses the room. "What happened?"

"Hmm?" Maka flops down upon her bed and lies with her head propped up on her elbows. "Nothing."

"This is _not_ ' _nothing_ '."

"Hey, Tsubaki, are you and Black Star a thing?"

Tsu chokes on air. "Don't change the subject like that!"

"No no no no, this is relevant, trust me."

Tsubaki very slowly puts her work down and turns to fully face Maka, who has a face that's half caught in a dream and half genuine curiosity. Pausing for just a little too long, she finally says, "Well, we're partners, yes."

Maka narrows her eyes just a bit, soiling the dreamlike quality of her expression. "You know what I mean, Tsu. Are you guys, like, a _thing_ -thing."

"You mean dating?"

They stare at each other with abject shock for a good half minute. Tsubaki flushes pink.

" _Are_ you?" Maka asks, sitting up on the bed, because well, _yes_ , that _is_ what she means, but the sudden sort-of-admittance surprises both girls. She's had her suspicions for a little while now, noting the strangeness of the fact that Tsu actually takes initiative to chide him rather than just leaving him be and the even stranger fact that Black Star genuinely respects her and her scoldings.

"Uhhh…" Tsu stalls, her gaze drifting over to the corkboard she keeps on the wall above her bed. It's devoid of any memorabilia, only there as a default decoration/personalization tool that shows up in all the dorm rooms. Maka stares intently, awaiting her answer.

"Yeah," her roommate finally says, her face far more flushed than just _pink._ "We're a thing."

Maka nods thoughtfully.

Tsu abruptly turns and bores into Maka. "Now it's your turn. Tell me what happened."

Suddenly, it's her turn to blush. Now that she's gotten her head out of the clouds, she has to actually _address_ and _talk_ about the events that had transpired in that practice room. And while they weren't doing necessarily weird and gross things ( _Damn Black Star and his damn gross jokes_ ), _talking_ about what they did is a different story.

"I, uh…" She fumbles with her words. _Can't even look her in the eye_ , she sighs internally. "Can I whisper it in your ear again?"

With an amused smile ( _Dammit, she_ knows), Tsu nods and gets closer to Maka, turning her head so that she may whisper into her ear.

" _We kissed,"_ Maka breathes, expecting her roommate to respond sharply, to jerk abruptly away or something, but when all she receives instead is Tsubaki leaning away and giving her a little, knowing, half-smile, she pouts slightly. "What?"

Tsu laughs lightly. "I don't know," she replies. "It just doesn't seem like the kind of thing you would do, Maka. I mean, you avoided all the other boys like they had cooties or something to the point of ridiculosity. We're not _twelve_ here."

"You sure about that?"

Both girls yelp and turn in the direction of the window, where Black Star's eyes just barely peek into the room.

"Because I'm pretty sure that if anyone's got 'em, it's that Demon Scythe," he continues, opening the window from the outside (somehow) and wriggling inside, landing with a plop upon Maka's bed.

"His name is Soul," Maka chides, but he ignores her.

"I mean, have you _ever_ seen someone with a color scheme like his? That is _not_ natural, he totally got that from a disease, and that disease is the _cooties._ You said you kissed him or some shit like that? You probably have like, three days before you turn white and red or whatever too." He pats her on the shoulder a little too roughly. "Good luck with that, M."

She vainly tries to push his hand off her shoulder with irritation, but knowing how strong he is, she gives up and sighs. "I don't know how you even _heard_ that, but the cooties do _not_ exist, and if they did, you would have them too because you've touched a girl. What are you even in here for?"

Black Star rolls off her bed to sit on the floor by Tsubaki and narrows his eyes at Maka. "You seem to have conveniently left out an explanation as to why his eyes are red and stuff, so I'm just going to have to ignore all your statements on the cooties if you do not provide me with any evidence disproving their existence, but other than that, good ol' Death the Kid has called us all in for a meeting in his office, so we're gonna have to go to that."

" _You_ seem to be conveniently ignoring the fact that the hypothetical cooties are simply caused and spread by touching someone of the other gender, but that's whatever," Maka says under her breath, resisting the urge to grab the book on her bedside table and hit him with it. "What's the meeting about?"

He shrugs. "Nooooo idea. Probably some lame-o thing about figuring out how we're gonna eat until the new girl manages to get everyone hyped enough to let us steal all their food. If you ask me, we should just mug 'em. That'll get us the good stuff without having to root through all the nasty things."

"Black Star, you remember how many of those NPCs turned out to be real people with souls; we can't be starving them for the sake of ourselves," Tsu tells him.

"Wouldn't we just respawn in the infirmary with all our needs reset if we starved?" Maka wonders aloud. "I mean, we can't die here. We just respawn. What _is_ the point of eating here, aside from physical pleasure?"

"Too much time to respawn. We've got things to do! Places to be!"

"Classes to fail," Maka dryly notes.

"You ain't exactly the top of the class either, Miss Got-a-C-on-Her-Physics-Test."

"Seventy-six percent is seventy-six more percents than what you get on _any_ of your assignments, tests or otherwise."

"Math is witchcraft and physics is just applied witchcraft, let's be real here."

"Guys, I think we should just go to the meeting," Tsubaki cuts in.

" _Great_ idea, my queen!" Black Star shouts, and he jumps up and Naruto runs out of the room, crashing through the door while he's at it.

Tsu's expression becomes one of fondness and exasperation. She picks herself up off the floor and glances at Maka again.

"Let's go."

* * *

"So. You all might be wondering why I've called you all here today," Kid begins, not even noticing that he said ' _you all'_ twice in the same sentence, and sitting in his desk chair with an air of professionalism that, if Maka were to speak frankly, is _very_ out of place.

She sits upon a couch, her expression as pleasant as she can muster. One arm is wrapped around Soul's waist in a way that can almost be mistaken for protective and romantic, though in actuality, it's to keep him from bolting (he's _bored_ , dammit!). Her partner is tense beside her, nervously switching his gaze between a Black Star only half restrained by the combined forces of Liz and Tsubaki, and Kid himself, who seems to not to care about the tension in the room.

Choruses of "No, not really," echo through the room amongst members not doing anything, and Black Star somehow manages to get out a, "Please, just one good noogie; that's all I need to give him, and then I'll be good." Impressive, considering how strangled he must be feeling.

Kid rolls his eyes ever so slightly. "Let's try this again, since you all seem to be assuming this is about food. You all might be wondering why I have gathered you here today if it is not concerning our next meal."

Crickets.

"Not really," Kilik says, causing Kid to facedesk.

"We're _here_ to discuss obliteration," he snaps, then squints at one of the mirrors in the room. "And also that mirror is just eight-tenths of a centimeter too far to the left; I would appreciate it if someone moved it back for me," he adds as he sits up properly again, but this time, not even the crickets come out to meet him. Even Black Star calms down and actually sits down to listen.

"Yeah, what about it?" someone finally asks.

Kid opens a desk drawer, pulls out a massive tome of a book, and starts paging through it. "Well, I was doing a little bit of research when I stumbled upon some previous records of groups who had also been trapped here in this purgatory for extended periods of time. They were all here in this school at some point, but as we can clearly tell, they aren't here anymore. That's because everyone had been long obliterated before even I came here."

"But _why?"_ Ox asks. "It's like dying again, except there's no guarantee of an after-after life. Why die if you can live on forever?"

"It doesn't sound like it says they _chose_ to be obliterated, though," Maka argues, "just that they were."

Kid shakes his head. "There's actually a very detailed record book for one group that talks about each person's backstory and how they got obliterated. It seems the two are interconnected, though I can't pinpoint the exact reason why. But regardless, it doesn't seem like anyone forced them to move on."

Maka has never heard of obliteration referred to as ' _moving on'_ , and it intrigues her, since she'd previously associated the act of obliteration with a forced change of state. "Can we get an example?"

"Well, there's this one girl who had her house robbed when she was young," he reads. "She had a number of younger siblings that got brutally murdered during the time between the break-in and the police showing up, and the way she ended up getting obliterated was that she watched over her friends as they one by one got obliterated as well, and when she felt she had served her time as their guardian, she moved on."

"This is weird," Soul whispers to her; nearby, Patty bounces on the arm of the couch and giggles.

"Read mooore, Kiddo, mooore!"

"Before that, it talks about this other girl in a band, who did things not unlike the way we do it now with our Operation Kishins, though they got caught by the school authorities. In life, she dedicated her life to music, though she never managed to make a living out of it, and it says she got obliterated by singing the song she wanted to show the world the most when it mattered the most."

"I wonder who's writing all these things down," Ox comments, pushing his glasses up. Harvar silently nods in agreement. "I mean, if the guardian girl had truly been the last to be obliterated, then how would her record get recorded in that massive book? And why is it all compiled into one? If there truly were multiple organizations that stayed in this high school through the eons, then why would they bother to put it all in the same book? Why are they all in the same language, even? This seems very fishy, Kid; what are you up to?"

"All it said is that she felt her time as their guardian was up," Maka points out. "That doesn't necessarily mean that she was the last to be obliterated. There might have been someone else who had arrived to be her successor. He or she would have written down her story. And wouldn't it just be easier to have one book of information about how to get out of this place? I mean, we had no idea about anything in this world until pretty much just now when Kid found this book. I think the real question in this case would be why _wouldn't_ they make one massive compilation? If it helped us, it probably helped the organizations before us."

"And also, English is more or less the standard language in the world. You'd know that if you watched _Death Note,"_ Kid adds.

"Kind of hard to do that when you're dead in a place without wi-fi or cable," Ox dryly snarks back.

"Anyway, is there anything we can really glean from this book? Or really learn about obliteration in general? Because I think I can see a pattern in here…"

"Obliteration is the natural passing of souls that have had their regrets or tragedies fulfilled," Soul suddenly says. Everyone in the room turns and looks at him. Maka loosens her grip on him so that she may better watch him explain himself. "I mean— just think about it! It sounds like those girls had something they wanted to do in life but never really got to do, but once they got to do it here, they accepted their redo and moved onto the next life."

"Explain Kim, then," Ox cuts in. "She was obliterated, but how does she fit into this neat little conjecture you've got there?"

Soul has no answer, but Maka knows it's only because he doesn't know Kim's backstory. She tries quickly to think of something that will satisfy Ox's question, but alas, she does not know the former witch's life well enough.

"She was accepted by everyone," Jackie says, explaining it all for her. "In life, she was ostracized for being a witch, and even before then, she couldn't do anything outside of the norm otherwise she'd be attacked. But when she went up that night and sang everyone that one song, the crowd still accepted and loved her despite it being different than normal just because it came _from_ her. They liked _her_ , not just her music. She got what she wanted. She moved on."

"So… let's get this all straight. People with tragic backstories come here after they die so that they can fulfill their regrets in life and live out a satisfying youth?"

"It seems so, yes," Kid replies, gently shutting the hefty volume before him.

"What do you want us to do about this?" Soul says, crossing his arms and staring at their leader with cynicism.

"I think it's time for us to move on."

* * *

Maka sits upon a bench in the gardens, equal parts watching Tsu work on the flowers, staring at the sunset, and staring into space, lost in thought. A book sits on her lap, still opened to the page she read last, though she has forgotten about it for now.

 _I think it's time for us to move on._

Everyone had had different reactions to Kid's statement, ranging from your standard breed of confusion, to unbridled rage, to eerie and uncharacteristic silence, along with everything in between.

" _YAHOOOOO!"_ Soul _sprints_ across her field of vision, but Black Star jumps off the roof with a spirited cry and tackles him, effectively killing him for the time being. Maka spares them both a look but turns away when Black Star starts kissing his biceps.

She herself finds herself unsure of how she feels. Having not witnessed firsthand the mess that had apparently been the obliteration of Crona, she can't really buy into the idea that leaving purgatory is inherently bad and terrifying. She remembers how happy Kim looked in the last moments before she left. Surely it can't be all _that_ bad.

"Whoo boy, really got him there, huh, Black Star?" Patty cheers, having suddenly appeared at the scene of the crime, looming over Soul's body and poking his face with the toe of her shoe.

Black Star cackles. "HELL YEAH I DID! THAT WAS SO GREAT, BRO, LET'S DO IT AGAIN!"

It takes Maka a full second to realize he's not talking to Patty but, in fact, to Soul, whom he is not yet aware is currently out of commission.

She sighs and closes the book on her lap, laying it aside for later on the bench. She walks over to Patty and Black Star, still not quite understanding that they had accidentally killed Soul, and shoos them away. Tsubaki shoots her an apologetic look, but Maka smiles in return as she hefts him over her shoulder. She should definitely make sure that this doesn't happen again for a while…

* * *

She's in her dorm, lazily skimming the pages of a grammar book, Soul lying half faded on her bed, when she hears the knock on her door. Glancing up, she says, "Who is it?"

"It's Liz. May I come in?"

"Uhhhhh…" Maka leans _way,_ way over and manages to unlock the door from where she's seated. "It's unlocked."

Liz cautiously pokes her head inside the room before stepping inside, closing the door behind her, and taking a seat on Tsu's bed. She peers at Soul for a moment before refocusing on Maka, who turns around in her chair to face her.

"You know, M, I've been thinking about the obliteration thing," she says. "And I talked about it with Kid before we even had that meeting, but even now, I can't really shake it as this terrible thing that really shouldn't be happening to us if we want to survive. I mean, I think part of what makes a satisfying life in this afterlife is the not getting obliterated bit. Kind of contradictory."

"So it is," Maka agrees.

"And, like… You know, all I really need to be happy with this obliteration thing would be following Patty even after we move on so that I can make sure that she's happy and well-cared for in the next life, if there is one. But I don't know if we can guarantee that. I doubt it."

Maka hums in agreement, not particularly sure where Liz came up with the idea to just ramble to her with as little context as possible but willing to roll with it anyway.

Liz flops backwards onto the bed and groans. "How is obliteration an even remotely good idea?"

Maka blinks and waits for more ranting, but when none comes, she speaks herself. "It's not good to dwell on the past, for one thing. But you never did explain to me what exactly happened to that Crona person when they got obliterated that made everyone so terrified of it happening to them as well."

Liz slides off the bed and sits on the floor, looking up at Maka. "Oh. Well, the short of it is that for some reason there were these great huge black things that just came up out of the ground, and whoever was swallowed by one got turned into an NPC. When there came to be too many of them, Crona rallied them all into one place, slayed as many as they could with their partner-thing-sword, and was eventually overtaken by the black things." She shivers at the thought. "Gone without a trace, but then again, same went for those black things. Haven't seen either Crona or them since."

Maka furrows her brow. "What happened to those people who got turned into NPCs?"

"Dunno, M'darling." Liz shrugs. "I know I saw a few of them around for a while after that, but one by one they vanished as well. I suppose the NPC thing wore off and it was just as if they had just arrived without memories and eventually got obliterated on their own."

The two (technically three, but Soul is already more than halfway out the room) sit in silence.

"You know, Maka, we should go pay a visit to Jackie."

Maka cocks her head at her friend. "Why though?"

"Because even if I don't want to get obliterated, you're right. It's not good for people to dwell on the past. And right now, there's no one in Spartoi more stuck in the past than Miss Lantern herself."

* * *

"Don't tell me she's having another one of her three hour naps," Liz groans after knocking on the door for the _third time._

"Well, she has been taking an awful lot of them lately," Maka points out. "Maybe she's depressed. Depression napping is pretty common."

"All the more reason to help her," Liz says. "This _can't_ be a healthy way of coping with losing Kim. It's been _months."_

Eventually, they just try the door to find that it's already unlocked. Peeking inside, they see a bean-shaped lump of blankets in the middle of one of the beds just barely moving in response to their entrance.

"Jackie?" Liz gently calls as she and Maka crouch by the bed.

Blanket bean curls up tighter.

Liz drops the Dealing With a Depressed Person voice and turns deadpan. "Jackie, please. You're being ridiculous."

"So what?" Jackie's muffled voice argues. "I'm allowed to be ridiculous. Everyone already thinks I'm crazy, antisocial, or both at this point so might as well take advantage."

Liz and Maka exchange confused looks.

"But… they don't?" Maka says. "They know you're just hurt and tired and are giving you some space."

Two bloodshot brown eyes peek through the blankets and glower at them. "You guys don't understand how I feel! You guys still have your partners and also don't have to kick out an obnoxious prick who keeps trying to sacrifice his hair and leaving said hair in a mess on the floor _every single day!_ So leeme 'lone." With that, Jackie buries herself in the blankets again.

Liz sighs, exasperated. "Stop acting like you're twelve. You are _not_ twelve and this is _not_ healthy and you should _probably_ talk about this."

" _Chuuni_ ," Maka mutters at the same time, unsure of where she got such a term but not really thinking about it.

Jackie sighs and throws all her blankets off of herself and onto the heads of Liz and Maka. She crosses her arms and glares at them both as the former yelps in startlement, but the latter simply sighs and pulls them off their heads. "Okay," Jackie curtly says, "I'm out of the cocoon. _What's up?"_

" _Rude,"_ Liz grumbles under her breath.

Maka peers curiously into Jackie's bloodshot eyes, wondering if perhaps she'd been crying or if she simply hasn't been sleeping. "You're not okay," she says, dumbly stating the obvious with the knowledge that asking if she _were_ okay would be dumber.

" _Wow._ What a _shocker._ I, the girl who had just been _crying,_ am _not_ okay!" Dripping with sarcasm, Jackie's voice gets louder and louder until she's nearly yelling.

 _Well, that answers that question,_ is all Maka can find herself thinking in the face of it. Blinking twice, she looks back up at Jackie, whom she notices has tears brimming at the corners of her eyes.

Her lip juts out the moment she sees Maka staring. "See? Crazy. Now go away; I've talked already."

"No one here thinks you're crazy. We're not the same people that you went to school with. No one in this school is like that. Remember?"

Jackie stops and all the fire of her outburst dies, leaving nothing but the raw pain of loss in its stead. She stares down at her bedsheets, and there's nothing either Liz or Maka can do except watch as a tear streaks down her cheek and falls to the ground.

"You're right," she quietly says. Strangely, it does not waver, but Maka suspects that it would should she talk any louder. "They're not the same. I'd forgotten."

Maka smiles just a bit. Now they're making progress.

* * *

"Hah, what a _scrub!_ What's that you've gotten on our latest English test? _Eighty-three?_ You know, I used to think that you were an actual worthy opponent of my _superior_ intellect, but it seems I was wrong! Don't get to hear _me_ say that every day!"

Maka's eyebrow twitches with irritation. _Why do I even bother to go to class anymore if all that's going to happen is zoning out to Ox's gloating?_

"I mean, I may not be strong or even _godlike—"_

"And yet you still manage to sound _exactly_ like Black Star except replacing talk about being ' _big'_ with intellectual egomania," Maka dryly interrupts.

Ox peers down at her from his seat (on _her_ desk! What the hell!) and pushes his glasses farther up his nose. "Oh, but Miss Albarn, I do believe that you are sorely mistaken in that manner. While Black Star can only justify his bragging through sheer brute force, which is hardly just to do in the first place, _I,_ on the other hand—"

Faster than anything she's ever done in her life, previous or current, Maka is out of her seat, a textbook in hand, prepped and ready to hit him with, not the spine of the book (as per usual), but the opposite edges of the pages themselves (for anyone who has ever been hit by a book can vouch that it's getting hit with that end that stings so much more). And she would have hit him as he's frozen to the spot, caught mid-sentence in the way his mouth gapes at her, but someone catches her arm from behind.

"Calm down, Maka," a familiar voice gruffly tells her, slowly letting go. "He's just being obnoxious. You know, for someone as pitifully tiny as you are, you have quite the temper."

"It's just as short as the rest of me," she snips as she lowers her book and turns to face Soul. Tossing the textbook aside, she crosses her arms and glares up at him. (Ox scuttles away while he has the opportunity.) Many of the NPCs have ceased their chatter, opting instead to stare at the two of them. They're lucky the teacher has not yet come back.

With a sigh, Soul leaps over her desk and takes her by the hand. "Let's go. No use staying here if you're going to be like this."

With a yelp, she lurches to the side, pulled towards the door. "Like what?" she challenges.

"Cranky," he answers in a matter-of-fact sort of way. "Ready to kill someone at the drop of a dime."

"It's not like he wouldn't respawn anyway," she grumbles as he pulls them out the door. As they pass by Ox's desk, she notices the near-perfect red _98_ on his paper and scowls. How dare he have something valid to back up his ego.

"And it's not like that's the point either," Soul says in return.

They escape into the halls, empty as expected, and they hardly slow down. He pulls her along as if leaving the class in the absence off a teacher were some kind of fatal sin worthy of capital punishment. And, she supposes, it kind of is. Minus the capital punishment thing, sort of. Heaven knows they can't even leave for a restroom break; the narcs'll be onto them faster than either of them can yell "Soul Resonance" if they knew.

It's when he slows down and silences his footsteps whilst also prompting her to the same that she realizes, as Black Star _zooms_ by them, it's not the narcs they're avoiding.

He breathes a quiet sigh of relief and they continue walking (normally now) in pleasant silence.

Unfortunately, it hardly lasts long. _And we were so close to the cafeteria toooooo~~~_

"BRO!" Black Star comes zooming back into the picture, jumping between them and flinging his arms around their shoulders with great force. (Maka silently laments the loss of Soul's hand in her own.) "And of COURSE we have my favorite minion here, too." He gives them both a cheeky grin, and Tsubaki hurries in after him, somewhat out of breath. She mouths her apologies. Well, it's not like Maka can even hold it against her in the first place.

"Wouldn't Tsu be your favorite minion, since she's your partner and all?" Maka inquires, struggling to push Black Star's arm off of her shoulder. Not like it matters anyway, because said boy removes it himself to aid in his ultra-dramatic gasp of shock.

"Tsubaki is _not_ a minion; she is a _goddess!"_ he says. "And I suppose that is sort of like a minion to a god, but she is still _far_ too good for such a title as _minion_ like you people."

Maka throws a glance at Tsu, who simply gives her a sheepish shrug and says, "Hey, Black Star, I think you should let them go now. We're probably bothering them."

He blinks at her. "But what could they possibly be doi—" he cuts himself off to take a step back and squint at the both of them.

Soul leers back at him, baring just a few teeth.

"…Uhuh. I see. Well, Tsubaki, I suppose you are right. We _should_ leave them to their business." Black Star gives them a smug half smile. "Whatever that may be."

"We're getting _coffee,"_ Maka snaps as he and Tsu begin to leave.

"For now."

Soul catches her hand before she can stomp after him and do anything rash. He shakes his head after her, and with one last dirty look at Black Star from Maka, they enter the cafeteria.

"I actually expected him to murder me right then and there, not call me 'bro'," he admits as they sit down. "My life kind of flashed before my eyes right then and there, if I'm being honest with you."

She peers at him curiously. "You've never actually told me all that much about your life. If anything at all, come to think of it."

"Neither have you, yours," he replies.

"I guess we're even in that sense." A pause. "Sooooo…"

"All right, all right. I guess I start. I came from a rich family."

"Uhuh."

"I had exactly one super obnoxious drama queen of an older brother."

"Lucky. I was an only child."

"Pffft. _You're_ the lucky one. If he were here, he'd be following us around playing the wedding march on his violin or some other stupid crap like that. And if I ever told him to fuck off, he'd look at me with that one look of utter betrayal and say something along the lines of, 'but _Souuul,_ this is the first opportunity you've ever had to hold a girl's haaaand! What if it never comes agaaaaiiin? You _have_ to take advantage of this and _marry_ her _immediately!'_ " Soul rolls his eyes and gives Maka a pointed look.

She whistles. "You're right. I _was_ the lucky one. My dad was already the opposite of that, and if I had a brother like yours…"

"So, what about your backstory, Pigtails?"

" _Pigtails?"_ she indignantly cuts in.

"Cough up: what happened to you?"

"You haven't even finished telling me your backstory!"

Soul leans his chair dangerously back onto its hind legs and puts his elbows up in the standard anime don't-talk-to-me-I-have-my-elbows-up pose. "What more is there to tell?"

"Literally everything. How did you get to Shibusen, if you went there at all, which I'm assuming you did, considering the theme around here. How did you die. What's your tragedy, if that's separate. All I know about you is you had a _brother."_

"Ah, but what a gold mine of salt he could be.

" ' _Gold mine of salt?'_ "

"Salt mine. Whatever."

"Still not enough."

Soul leans forward again with an exasperated sigh, letting the front legs of his chair hit the ground again. "Fine. I found out I could transform into a weapon, so I ran away from home to go to Shibusen so I could make my own mark on the world."

Maka rests her head on her elbows. "What kind of weapon?"

With a shark-toothed grin, Soul spreads out an arm and says, "a scythe."

Nothing happens to his arm, and after a few seconds, he sheepishly lowers it.

"That's usually when I would turn my arm into a scythe blade to show off, but I kind of forgot that's not how it works here."

"We could always, you know, resonate," Maka offers, somewhat shyly.

"You wanna?"

She says nothing, only bites her lower lip and nods. Wordlessly, he holds his hand out to her. She takes it, and they close their eyes.

For a few seconds, she can hear nothing but the pounding bloodrush in her own ears, but then—

" _SOUL RESONANCE!"_

She feels the transformation this time, for it is far more purposeful than the simple, passive thing they had when he was playing piano. She feels the wings sprout from between her shoulderblades, her dress skirt tumble passed her knees to her ankles, and something cool yet most definitely alive land in her hands.

Opening her eyes, she pauses to marvel at the large, feathery angel wings she's been given, but only for a moment. The red, black, and silver scythe in her hands— Soul, she realizes— grabs her attention.

Curious, she spins it around somewhat clumsily, like a new drum major just starting to adjust to the weight of an equally new baton. Though she doesn't quite get the hang of it, she decides to start jumping around on the empty building's dining tables anyway, loving the thrill and the swish the air makes as she cuts down imaginary enemies with her weapon partner, a thrill that grows a bit too distracting.

The shirtless, irritated image of Soul appears reflected in the scythe blade. At least, the part of the blade _not_ half buried in the wall. "Can you _not_ do that next time?" he says. "I would prefer to keep myself in one room or the other, not caught in between like some kind of indecisive schoolgirl."

"Sor- _ry,"_ she mutters as she frees his blade with a hefty tug. She holds it up to her face so that she may talk to him better, but whatever gripe she has dies on her tongue when she notices the long, jagged scar on his chest, extending out from one shoulder all the way over to his other hip. "What happened there?" she asks instead.

"Here?" Soul looks down at his chest. "Oh. That's where I… died."

There's a hefty pause.

"How?" Maka finally asks. Her voice is strangely hollow.

Soul hides his reflection. "Too much trust in my partner too soon into the relationship."

She abruptly begins parkouring around the room again.

"Oi, Maka! Watch where you're—"

She internally curses the heels as she slips off a bench and crashes to the floor, the two of them detransforming mid fall. Suffice to say, she is not pleased when just moments after her own fall, she breaks Soul's as he crashes down onto her.

They exchange glares as they begin to recover, but before any snark can be said, the cafeteria doors dramatically open as someone neither of them can see bursts in.

 _Crap, did the narcs catch us?_

"Maka? Soul?" _Oh, thank goodness. It's only Liz._ "Are you guys here? I know you like having your coffee dates in here, so I'm pretty sure you're here. Kid's called an impromptu meeting in Kim and Jackie's old dorm.

"Jackie's been obliterated."

* * *

 _To the rest of the Battalion— Spartoi._

 _If you're reading this, then that means I have been obliterated._

 _I've been giving it a lot of thought for the last few days. I've been thinking about Kim's  
obliteration and the book on the stuff a lot lately, and you know… _

_I've decided that there really is nothing for me to lose anymore. I've fulfilled what I  
could not do in life. I know you all love and appreciate me. I'll miss you all, but if I'm going to  
move on, then that means I'm ready. I truly hope that if Kid is right and being obliterated  
really does mean we're ready to move on to the next life that it's just as pleasant and  
not-terrible as he said it would be._

 _Signed,  
Jacqueline O'Lantern Dupré_

* * *

" _ **So, what's your backstory?"**_

Kid motions to the letter after everyone has finished reading it. "Clearly, she wasn't thinking quite straight, since there are some passages that are a little convoluted and strangely worded, but I think we can still take it at face value."

Maka reads the letter again, not quite fully processing the fact that Jackie is gone now.

"… _ **Well, I told you already I had a dad whose personality was the exact opposite of your brother's.**_

Meanwhile, Ox pushes his glasses farther up his nose and says, "So what do you want us to do about this?"

Maka puts the letter down and hands it to Tsubaki, who had been rereading it as well, just over Maka's shoulder.

" _ **Only thing is, he was a womanizer, though somehow I was his only child. My mama up and left before I started Shibusen, and I wanted to be just like her. Only thing is, I didn't trust my weapon partners long enough to get me to my ultimate goal of making a death scythe out of them, so I put them under a lot of pressure to do well."**_

"I still think the same thing, that we should move on," replies Kid. "But aside from the letter from Jackie, I have other reason to be restating this.

"I've been reading more of the records and— aside from realizing that we should also be writing down our experiences for any future generations— well. I know many of you can recall the strange affair of Crona and Ragnarök's obliteration, a mystery never fully explained.

" _ **You had multiple partners at once?"**_

"After digging through various tomes and whatnot, I found another recorded case of something similar happening to a group that came before us. According to them, the great, huge shadowy things that showed up and transformed our people into the soulless NPCs were the result of a program made to deter people from lingering too long in the afterlife. Should there be people who do stay for too long, the shadows will come, and people's souls will be taken one by one until someone gets obliterated.

" _ **No, I went through five different partners during my time at Shibusen. They all ditched me at some point. Looking back, I can't even really blame them. I was really harsh."**_

"So it seems that it wasn't that Crona had been absorbed by the shadows, somehow taking them with them, but the fact that they chose to be sacrificed and the acceptance that they wouldn't be one of us anymore that got them obliterated, therefore eliminating the shadows. It was never really meant to be a bad or terrifying experience, obliteration. As quick and painless as dying."

When Kid's monologue is complete, all is quiet among the Spartoi members.

"… _ **You know, it's kind of funny if you think about it. We had opposite problems in life— I trusted too much, you trusted too little— and yet, here we are, partners in the afterlife."**_

"I don't suppose there's anything any of you want to get off your chests?" he quietly asks them all.

No one even looks at him for a second. Maka finds herself staring at her skirt, picking at the hem to distract herself.

And then, someone speaks up.

" _ **Funny how things work out sometimes."**_

"Fire and Thunder are fake," blurts Kilik.

A chorus of bewildered " _What?"_ s echo through the group, and the boy swallows his pride and continues talking.

"You know how you can make anything out of dirt in this world, as long as you remember what it was and how it worked in life?" he asks everyone. Not everyone nods, but he continues anyway.

" _ **Hey, Maka, I wanna tell you something."**_

"Well, that's why Fire and Thunder are the only children here. They _can't_ have come with me to this afterlife. They didn't. I came here with only my memories of them, so I recreated them out of the earth. They were earth shamans, see, so it miraculously worked." Kilik looks down at the two children sitting on his lap with love. "But they're not real."

"How do you remember anything then?" asks Patty, bouncing up and down on a bed in the exact opposite fashion of the room's mood.

" _ **What is it?"**_

"I guess they simply worked well enough," he replies. "Maybe I just don't have a partner that'll come into this afterlife. Who knows."

Everyone stares as he plants a kiss on each of the twins' heads and blows on their foreheads, transforming them back into dust. Dust that, fortunately enough, doesn't linger in the room but rather twinkles into nothingness.

Floodgates of confessions are opened after that.

" _ **I—"**_

It's hard for Maka to keep track of them all, partially because she doesn't know enough people to care all that much, but mostly because her head is still spinning from all the events that have been transpiring as of late. Tsu notices her dazed expression and glazed eyes and pulls her in for a side hug.

"There's a lot going on, I know," she whispers. "There's a lot to take in, but we'll make it."

The pigtailed girl can only mutely nod in response.

" _ **We're here," says Liz, motioning to the doorknob that leads into the room Kim and Jackie once shared, apparently now empty. Maka nods, and she opens the door for the three of them, not catching whatever it is that Soul has to say.**_

"— _love you."_

* * *

 ** _author's note iv._** _so i was at a tournament and i was telling me captain abt how i was writing a fic and i JUST BARELY got the two leads to kiss after 35k of just y'know stuff happening and he, being the forever alone he is, told me "you should have waited 100k before he even got a hug and then end it right there all like 'WILL HE GET ANOTHER HUG? ? ? ? WHO KNOWS! ! ! ! and then wait another 100k before he gets another hug."_

 _y'know i had like ten million a/ns all scribbled down in this one place and i'm looking through them now and am just like "nope. nope. only relevant on ao3. nope" so. like. yeah. sometimes i like having a read between the lines style but now this a/n is just p much pointless and yeah. :c_


	5. epilogue: bring me home to you

**Word Count:** 4,904

* * *

How is it that life can pass them by so quickly when they're not even alive anymore in the first place? Life feels like a montage these days, and Maka feels like she'll never be able to keep track of who's still here and who's gone if people keep moving on at this rate. She's only thankful that the job of recordkeeping had not been delegated to her.

She leans against the rail with a sigh, coffee in hand. (How _dare_ Soul get her so addicted to a drink so dark and terribly bitter…) "So, who's left now, Liz?" she asks.

"Well, Ox vanished after he got perfect scores on all his tests. Harvar's been lurking ever since, but no one's actually seen him in a little while, so I think we can chalk that up to him getting obliterated as well. He probably left a letter if that's the case and— _ugh_ , we'll have to track that down if that's the case. Tsugumi and the girls will probably be gone after tonight. They have that concert planned out and everything. After that, it'll just be you and Soul, Black Star and Tsubaki, and Kid, Patty, and I." The near entirety of the older girl's weight leans against the roof railing. Liz has been running on nothing but sugar and caffeine for the last few days, and it shows. " _I'm so tiiireeedddd~"_

Maka absently pats her friend on the back. "Don't worry about it. You're doing really well."

"But there's still so much organizing to do! There's actually not a day that goes by lately that I don't thank someone out there for sending me Kid because his skills have really rubbed off on me, but it's _still_ not _enough!"_

"Well, think of it this way: in a few days, you won't have to deal with any of this anymore because you'll also have moved on."

"That, M'darling, would be very true. Would be, if I weren't so worried about Black Star and Patty's shenanigans as of late. _Someone_ save us."

"Variety is the spice of life, but to be honest, just a bland cup of noodles would be just fine at this point, I agree."

Liz sighs and looks up at her fondly. "Y'know, M'darling, I'm really going to miss you in the next life. I might not realize it, but I know I will."

Maka smiles almost melancholically. "I don't know if I want to move on if I don't get to know you guys again in the next life. It just wouldn't seem quite right."

"Ah, but that's our problem, Maka." So rarely does Liz call her by her true name that it catches her off guard when she does. "We're people. We grow and change with time, unless, of course, we force ourselves not to. And eventually, at some point, we're all going to move on."

It's certainly food for thought, and the girls watch the sun set in pleasant silence.

* * *

"And now, for my next trick…"

"Black Star, get _down_ from there!"

Black Star glances down from his position at the edge of a rooftop and pouts. "Aww, but _Tsubakiiii—"_

"No buts but your own butt, Black Star. What you're doing is dangerous. Come down."

"But they're enjoying my show!" He motions to the grand total of three (3) people down on the ground besides Tsubaki: Soul, Maka, and Patty. "See?"

Tsu throws them all a sharp glance and raises an eyebrow at them.

"Uhh," stutters Maka, trying to think of one thing Black Star has done for her that would justify her defense of him, but before she can even confirm or deny her enjoyment, Patty applauses with great excitement.

"Yes! It's a great show, and I can't wait for the grand finale when he jumps off the roof to do something cool and then messes up so hard he ends up respawning in the infirmary!" she squeals whilst bouncing up and down.

"Well, it certainly wasn't _boring_ watching him prance around like some sort of circus monkey," Soul comments, but Maka doubts Tsu's even listening anymore and struggles to muffle her laughter.

"Get down here right now," she commands, and Black Star leans back in the most dramatic way possible.

"Awwwww, _okaaaaay,"_ he whines and preps to jump down.

"No!" Tsu sharply tells him, and, once again pouting, climbs over the railing surrounding the roof so that he can boringly run down the stairs. She sighs, saying, "I can't believe that boy."

"I can't believe he listens to you," Maka replies, causing Tsubaki to freeze for a second. "He's so hard headed, I don't know if he'd even listen to himself. I doubt i—" She gets cut off by Tsu crushing her against her bosom. As she struggles to think or even breathe, Maka does manage to catch something.

"Tell Black Star thank you, and that I said goodbye."

And suddenly, she can breathe again. Not quite yet realizing what just happened, she throws a glare Soul's way and says, "Thanks for the help there."

Immediately, Soul puts his hands up in the air and takes a few steps back in surrender. "Don't blame me; asphyxiation via boobs is none of _my_ beeswax."

Before she has the opportunity to snap back at him, Black Star emerges from the building.

"Tsubaki?" he calls. " _Tsubaki?"_

"She's been obliterated!" sings Patty.

" _TSUBAKI?"_

If she weren't so terrified of Black Star's expression, the way he can't listen to anyone, even for a few seconds, if they're not Tsubaki would be kind of funny. Maka's heart drops into her stomach when Patty's words finally find their meaning in her head, and she notices tears of frustration formin in the corners of Black Star's eyes.

"Hey, Black Star," she nervously says, and he turns his gaze towards her, striking fear into her. "Tsu… Tsubaki told me to tell you… thank you."

" _ **WHAT?**_ " If she didn't think he were capable of blowing out human eardrums with the power of his lungs alone already, the way he's roaring now certainly would convince, if not deafen, her.

"And also goodbye."

There is no roar of denial this time. There's no sound coming from anyone, except maybe an absent giggle or two from Patty. ( _Seriously, what's going on with her?_ Maka wonders.) Only the wind that blows makes noise, swirling the dried, dead leaves around their legs, making it look like they're all surrounded by a cloud of little, brown butterflies. Butterflies that crackle and snap when crushed underfoot.

"She's been obliterated." It sends _chills_ down Maka's spine with how calm he sounds right now. "She has, hasn't she?" he demands.

"Yuuup!" Once again, it's Patty delivering the fated news with a cheerful smile.

"…I see. Then there's only one option left."

There are only two options as to what that one option is in her mind, and Maka doesn't know which option scares her more: Black Star killing the messenger, Patty, and ultimately going berserk, or Black Star taking everything with the coldest calmness she's ever seen. And _then_ ultimately going berserk.

Whether what he actually does is fortunate or not depends on your opinion.

For Patty, it's fortunate because he doesn't even _think_ about the possibility of killing her, so she skips away.

For Soul, it's _un_ fortunate because even if he dies and comes back to life again, he's pretty sure his ears will never be the same again.

For Maka, it's a mix of both because while it seems he's certainly not going berserk, _damn_ does she want him to shut up.

"OBLITERATE ME!" he angrily bellows at the sky, on his knees with both hands in the air. "OBLITERATE ME, YOU COWARD!"

"Black Star," she tries to say, but it's lost in his hollering. " _BLACK STAR."_ Alas, Maka couldn't even hear herself if she tried at his current volume. She shares a look with Soul, who nods at her with his hands over his ears (as if _that_ 'll do anything).

Pulling a book out of her bag, she marches up to Black Star just like she did when they first met, only this time she dents his skull with her book, and his screaming abruptly ceases.

"Are you an _idiot?!"_ she yells, knowing full well that he is very much an idiot. "That won't get you obliterated! Tsubaki's gone because she was ready!" She's crying now. "So until _you're_ ready, you're _stuck_ here!"

Maka never thought she'd see the day when Black Star, of all people, cried. After all, he's an egomaniac with a god complex the size of the moon. He thought he knew and could do anything. Crying just wasn't something she expected him to know how to do.

 _Then again,_ she supposes, glancing over at Soul, _since when have my expectations ever aligned with reality?_

* * *

To some degree, Maka's glad that Soul isn't at the concert with her. He and Kid have been dragged away by Black Star for some kind of man ritual or something. She's not too sure; all she knows is that the could-be assassin dragged them both away saying something about all of them being "strong manly men who didn't need to hang out with their partners all the time."

Well, he's definitely not _wrong_ about that. It is healthy for them to spend time with other people, though Black Star's attitude could be considered concerning.

At the very least, she's glad she won't have to deal with Soul's inevitable nitpicking if he were to attend.

She sits in the crowd of NPCs with only Liz for company. Patty's managing the sound system for their final concert, so all things considered, Liz is her only _possible_ company. But she doesn't mind.

As the girls' final song fades, Tsugumi runs up to the front of the stage with the biggest smile ever upon her face and yells into the mic, "WE LOVE YOUUUUU!" She then puts the microphone back into its designated spot and tackles Meme and Anya into a hug. She says something, too soft for anyone but her partners to hear, and then they're all gone.

Maka glances at Liz. The crowd is stirring now, murmuring angrily amongst themselves. The older girl nods at her, and they both escape backstage before they get caught in a crowd reenactment of Kim's obliteration.

* * *

Soul still plays piano for her, just not the song of his soul, not frequently anyway. Maka doesn't care. She loves his music regardless. Whether he composed it or if he's simply interpreting some classic piece, she can't tell. She only knows she loves it, that she loves him, though she's not quite sure how to word that last bit aloud.

She doesn't sit on the bench with him anymore; it would interfere with some of the other pieces. So instead, she drags another chair into the already tiny room and watches him from there, listening intently.

He's practicing a storm today, that much she can tell.

"Hey, Soul?" she says.

He ceases suddenly. (Or is that just how the piece ends? She can't tell.) "Yes, Maka?" he replies a little hesitantly.

There's a pause. Maka pretends it's because she doesn't know what to say, but in actuality, she's really just gathering the courage to say it. "Let's go dancing."

Another pause, followed up by what she swears is Soul softly swearing. "No," he simply replies, turning around for the briefest moment to face her as he does. He returns to the keys, and she pouts.

"Why not?"

"You don't know how to dance properly, do you?" He doesn't stop playing.

"Maybe not, but do _you?"_ she challenges.

" _Surprise,_ Maka," he drawls, "I can."

"No _way."_

"Perks of being a rich boy, if you want to call grueling hours of ballroom lessons a 'perk'. I personally wouldn't."

"Show me?"

"Nice try, but no."

She's long since gotten up, and now she's standing right behind him as she says, "Then prove it."

 _Now_ he stops. She lowers her face to his eye level as he turns around, burning her challenge into his soul.

For a few seconds, he stares back at her with the same cool gaze that has always been his default. Suddenly, he gives her a cheeky grin, and before she can reinforce her challenge, he leans quickly forward and kisses her on the tip of her nose. She yelps in surprise and draws back, the burning fire of her dare blown out in an instant.

"I loooove youuuu~" he drawls with the exact same grin. His voice tells her ' _sarcasm',_ but when she sees the way he's looking at her, she know he really means it.

She still gives him a look. (It's probably diminished by her embarrassment, but whatever.)

"What? You told me to prove it," he innocently says, then gives her a wicked grin. "You just never specified what."

"Dance with meeee! Prove that you can dance with meeee!" she begs.

He sighs and crosses his arms, looking fondly up at her. "And you're just going to leave me at 'I love you'?" he teases.

A little bit exasperated, she takes his face with one hand and gives him a proper kiss.

.

.

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…

"I love you."

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.

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.

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.

"…All right, Maka. I'll dance with you."

* * *

"What do you think they even do when Black Star drags Soul and Kid away to have those 'manly man' hangouts in his room?"

"Technically, it's not even Black Star's room; he shares it with Soul, remember?"

"Ahh, right. So if he woke up early enough, then I guess theoretically Black Star would only have to kidnap Kid and lock the door, huh? Still, you gotta wonder what they do in there."

"Soul doesn't tell me."

"Neither does Kid tell me."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"Maybe they have deep heart-to-hearts that they can't retell to anyone else?"

" _Heart-to-hearts?_ We're talking about _Black Star_ here. He has the emotional range of an angry teaspoon. Of course they don't. They probably just watch him do stupid things or play 'The Floor is Made of Lava' together or whatever for a few hours then just unlock the door and leave when he conks out."

"I'm going to be honest here, I can't imagine Kid playing The Floor is Made of Lava with those two unless he gets to rearrange the room first."

"Wouldn't making the room symmetrical kind of ruin the purpose of parkouring around the room? I mean, then you don't get to make daring leaps and all."

"It's been a while, so maybe Kid got a mirror installed on one of the walls of the room to make everything appear symmetrical no matter what."

"How much do you wanna bet that one of them has accidentally crashed into the mirror thinking it was fair game?"

"Oh my god, I bet it would be Black Star."

"He would, he would."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"So, how's the recordkeeping going? Did you ever find out what really happened to Harvar?"

" _Eugh,_ don't remind me. I'm pretty sure Patty, of all people, knows what's up, but all she's told me so far is that he left following after his family. What does that even mean?"

"Well, his backstory went something along the lines of him wanting to be respected, but then when he did gain that respect, it was out of fear, if I remember all that correctly."

"You did. That's pretty much what we have written."

"Ox and Harvar respected each other; it's hard not to respect your own partner. Maybe after Ox got obliterated, Harvar followed soon after because he felt that kind of respect gave them a kind of kinship? I don't know."

"…Sounds reasonable. I'll just put that down later then…"

"Make sure to add a footnote saying that we have no concrete proof of that. Can't be passing false information down, after all."

"All right."

"…"

"…"

"You know, I think I'm going to be obliterated soon."

"What makes you say that?"

"I've been feeling like I can leave Patty on her own. She can take care of herself."

"She's always been capable of that."

"Yeah, but now I think she'd still be smiling and happy if I weren't there to keep track of her."

"…"

"You know, I thought I'd have to see Patty obliterated first before I would be able to move on, but I guess not. It's a nice feeling, M'darling, to have all your issues in order, to see all your ducks lined up in pretty rows for counting. Why, I think I…"

"…"

"…"

"…Liz?"

"…"

" _Liz?"_

"…"

" _LIZ!"_

* * *

"Patty, your sister's been obliterated."

"Oh. Well, that's not a problem, now is it?"

"Pardon?"

"All I have to do now is just—"

* * *

Maka can't bring herself to look back at Kid when he stares at her. She feels bad, though she has no reason to. The Thompson sisters would have been obliterated regardless, but to have been there for both of them and possibly even been the _cause_ of one of them— well, guilt is simply a given, now isn't it?

"She just let herself go?" he slowly asks her.

Unable to speak, she can only nod in response.

Kid rearranges some of the things on his desk. Everyone— the three others that remain, anyway— stares at him, completely still and silent. Even Black Star.

"Interesting," Kid muses.

Maka dares not ask what he means, but he answers the unspoken question anyway.

"Then it seems that rather than Liz coming to the afterlife to make sure that Patty would be able to live a normal life, Patty followed her sister to make sure that she'd be able to forgive herself for the bad decisions she made in life, and once Liz got obliterated, she fulfilled her duty and simply had to accept her fate," he explains. "Could have been both, though. Mutually reliant on one another's happiness in order to move on."

"You're not sad that your girlfriend is gone?" Black Star practically yells, causing two pairs of eyes to zip towards him.

"What?" Soul cuts in. "It's not like it was some great huge secret or anything. Kim told, like, _everyone_ when she was still here. Even _I_ knew about it, and I wasn't even _part_ of your stupid group at the time. Word got around, y'know."

There's still quite the pause anyway.

"Well," Kid discreetly begins, "knowing that she was happy and fulfilled when she left us is enough for me to know that grieving would be pointless, unlike some people who can't seem to grasp the idea that this is normal and to be expected." He leers at Black Star, who leers back.

"But she's _gone_!" he argues.

"It's also not like I'm not going to follow soon enough anyway, so what is there to be sad about? Quite frankly, Black Star, you're holding onto this a bit too much, aren't you? How do you expect to follow her if you can't let go of the fact that she's begun to move? 'Don't go where I can't follow' only applies when the both of you are moving."

More silence, punctuated only by the scratching of Kid's pen. Maka marvels at how quickly the deed was done.

He sighs and puts the pen down, looking at the two other remaining Spartoi members one by one. He rests his chin on his elbow with a smile. "It's almost our time, isn't it," he says. It's not a question. It's a statement, and it hangs in the air like a grim reminder.

Kid returns to his scribblings.

* * *

It's so _boring_ in the afterlife without all of their friends.

Maka finds herself aimlessly wandering from class to class, half of them not even her own (considering how much of an enigma she must be to her teachers, it doesn't matter anyway), from class to the cafeteria, to the roof, then back down again into a class to stare out the window. In a word, she's restless.

So's Soul, and so's Kid. More often than not, Maka catches at least one of their eyes while wandering around campus every day. More frequently than ever, they gather again and again in the little principal's office that now seems so big and empty now that it's devoid of most of its occupants.

Days turns into weeks, though it's not like anyone's keeping track. But weeks don't quite get to turn into months, and they're once again sitting in that one little office when once again, something happens.

"Hey, Kid, why do you think we don't see to be getting obliterated?" she asks one day as she lies upside down on the couch, her legs carelessly slung over the back and she herself staring at the empty, white ceiling above them.

"I don't know," he replies, staring listlessly out the window at the after school clubs gathered outside. "I don't know about you guys, but I could have sworn that _I_ was ready, that I've accepted all the mistakes I made in the past, but I really don't know."

Her reasons for not passing on are more than a little bit selfish, but she chooses to keep them to herself.

"We never really got a whole lot on your life, did we?" says Soul.

"What's there to tell?" Kid asks with a shrug. He carefully turns to face the two left in the office. "I was a shinigami, I lived a long while, and I passed cold, indifferent judgement on hundreds if not thousands of lives."

"Yes, but how did you _die?"_

He pauses, mulling the question over.

"I don't quite remember, come to think of it," he slowly admits.

"It's even weirder because you were a god, weren't you? A shinigami," Maka thoughtfully says. "A god of death. How would a death god die?"

"I don't know." Frowning, he stares intently at the great book of records that seems to have taken up permanent residence on his desk as of late.

Maka remembers withering into nothing when she was alive. She's glad she has had reliable friends in this afterlife.

"I think," says Kid, interrupting her silent, somber walk down memory lane, "that I came here on purpose."

She sits up properly, and for the first time in their meeting, the three remaining members of Spartoi look at each other. "On purpose?"

He nods. "I remember having a conversation with my father. I don't remember exactly what he or I said then, but I don't think it matters in the first place." He laughs a little, staring up at the ceiling with a halfhearted, nearly wistful smile. "I was supposed to help people move on from trauma inflicted upon them by Shibusen during their youth, I think, regardless of whether or not we, the shinigami, had any direct influence on their tragedies."

Maka peers at him curiously, noting the way the light is fading from his eyes when he hollowly laughs again.

"It seems that I'd forgotten what I'd come here for in the first place. Must've been a mistake of ours, erasing my memories until I'd found Liz and Patty, and even then I didn't think about it." He closes his eyes. "I really messed up."

"Well, I suppose that forming a group of people to fight against some rando all while maintaining a culture of dwelling in one place and time would count as that, yes," Soul dryly comments, crossing his arms.

Kid snorts but just barely, eyes still closed but still half grinning regardless. "It's okay. It's been fixed now. There haven't been new arrivals in months. It seems like Shibusen has changed since we've been there, so I think that my duty here is done. It's time for me to go home."

His final breath is a sigh, and it is the last part of him to leave the afterlife.

It's eerily silent once he's gone. There's an air of finality in the principal's office that had served as their HQ for so long, now devoid of its leader, almost as if some quiet little background piece had suddenly gone silent, and all there is to hear now is just the quiet shuffling of the people inside.

"It's just us now," Maka says, breaking the silence.

"Yeah," Soul replies, his voice barely stronger than a breath, barely louder than a whisper, almost as if speaking any louder might shatter the fragile air.

Silence again.

Maka very slowly walks over to Soul and takes him by the hand. She then proceeds to lead them out the door, almost sauntering out. "Let's go dancing one last time."

* * *

The music building is empty. It's not silent; his piano playing rings through both of their minds, an earworm they can't get rid of no matter how ridiculous that might sound.

She leans just a little bit closer to him as they dance, pressing her forehead to his chest. "Hey, Soul."

"Hmm?"

"You play really well."

"Nah."

"Don't you trust me?"

"Do _you_ trust _me_?"

She pauses to think about it, allowing herself to become lost in the rhythm of the dance. By all accounts, she should have hated him, distrusted him, dove wholeheartedly into the " _Anti-Demon Scythe_ " part of the Battalion, from the moment she got her memories back. After all, if there's anything she learned in life, it's that trust leads to hurt, loyalty leads to lies, especially with boys, and she's just better off alone and partnerless. Yet all the time she's spent in this afterlife has shown her otherwise, and she's allowed herself to become vulnerable again.

"I trust you," she says, and she means it.

She feels him rest his chin on the top of her head. It's a little irritating and painful, but she can be like that to him sometimes too.

"Well, then, I trust you, too."

It's a moment she doesn't want to end. She wants to live like this forever, in their own little world with only herself and Soul. She breathes in his scent and lives off the new feeling of trust she has in him. She feels almost as if she could…

…disappear.

"Thank you, Maka."

* * *

She's _late_.

It's horrible, and she hates to admit it because _dammit_ , Maka Albarn is _never_ late. And yet, here she is, running in heels to catch the train, suitcase in tow.

It's a mix of a lot of things that makes her lose track of where she's going and crashes into some poor soul. Her rush is one of them; mentally blaming Black Star is another. She screams as they both go down. She internally curses herself for not taking her stepmother's (admittedly arbitrary) advice when she was younger and becoming Catwoman by practicing running in heels because if she had, she might have at least been able to catch herself.

"I'm so sorry, sir. It's just that I'm running late, and I have to catch my train to see my friend Tsubaki for her wedding, and I wasn't looking because I was mad at myself, and now I'm rambling, and I'm so, _so_ sorry…"

It's when she actually looks at who she crashed into and sees a version of herself with angels' wings reflected in his eyes that she trails off.

He's familiar, achingly familiar. She's positive she knows him from somewhere, yet she's never seen him in her life. This she knows, because it would be objectively difficult to forget a person with white hair and red eyes.

They stare at one another, sitting on the ground as if they're frozen to the spot, mouths ajar and half sprawled over one another. Passerbys pass them by without a second thought, the clicking of their shoes against the brick fading out of Maka's mind as a memory, fragile from being buried in the back of her mind for so long, slowly comes back to her. It's from a life that's not quite her own, but when she sees the recognition dawning on his face as well, she knows it is real.

"…Soul?"

* * *

 _ **author's note v.**_ _i don't usually get my fics betaed (read: I have never had a proper beta ever) but this time I would like to extend a very special thanks to my beta reader birdy, even though after ten pages and a two day roast session we both came to the conclusion that I'm not yet good enough for her to beta for me and I should come back when I've improved enough to be worth her time. But she taught me a lot. I feel like I just gained ten million xp points, and I promise the next fic will be better._

 _You should all know now that I'm terrified of every single one of you but at this point none of you can ever roast me harder than birdy did so tbh if it's bad I'm gonna encourage you to flame nothing can ever compare to the raw yet strangely encouraging "you suck" of my beta. who read three pages before finally realizing it was soul eater fanfiction. yeah i love her._

 _Anyway, since I guess you made it to the end of this fic, I suppose some introductions are in order. Hi! I'm LunaBloom. I like fantasy aus and soft, casual "I love you"s! my longfics have two settings: intricate and epic adventure, or soft and quiet slice-of-life! I'd like to think I'm funny but this isn't really a great example of that. Yeah I'm so, so sorry for this train wreck. thanks for reading it anyway! it means a lot to me ;ww; reviews? :D have a greaaaat daaayyyy~~_


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